THE  STORY 


CHARLES  EDWARD  RUSSELL 


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5M  5/80  (T2555s8)418D->o/ 


THE  STORY  OF 
WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

Soldier  of  the  Common  Good 


BY 
CHARLES  EDWARD  RUSSELL 

Author  of  "Stories  of  the  Great  Railroads," 
"Why  I  am  a  Socialist,"  etc. 


CHICAGO 

CHARLES  H.  KERR  &  COMPANY 
CO-OPERATIVE 


Copyright  1914 
By  CHARLES  EDWARD  RUSSELL 


JOHN  K.  HIGGINS 

PRINTER  AND   BINDER 


376-382    MONROE  STREET 
CHICAGO,      ILLINOIS 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I     THE  ENLISTMENT 5 

II     THE  FIRST  BATTLES 34 

III  ON  THE   FIRING   LINES 47 

IV  THE    INTERESTS    THEN    AND    THE    INTERESTS 

Now 68 

V  STRIPPING  OFF  THE  MASKS 82 

VI  JOHN   BROWN  AND  HARPER'S  FERRY     ...  97 

VII  THE   MAN    UNAFRAID  ENLISTS  FOR   LABOR     .  114 

VIII  PHILLIPS  THE  SOCIALIST 131 

IX  THE  MODERN   WAR   AGAINST  PRIVILEGE     .      .  149 

X  THE  ATTACK  ON  THE  CITADEL  OF  REACTION  .  165 


THE  STORY  OF 
WENDELL  PHILLIPS 


THE  ENLISTMENT 

MEN  and  women,  all  under  the  sway  of  a  pas 
sionate  excitement,  many  half  maniacal  with 
rage,  have  crowded  the  hall  to  the  limit  of  its 
capacity.  All  are  upon  their  feet,  surging, 
shouting,  screaming,  gesticulating.  On  the 
platform  before  them  is  a  tall,  grave,  handsome 
man,  waiting  to  be  heard.  Without  bravado, 
without  concern,  he  stands  and  waits.  Part  of 
the  audience  desires  to  hear  him ;  part  desires 
to  drown  his  voice  with  clamors ;  part  is  deter 
mined  to  take  his  life. 

He  stands  and  waits.  Even  his  foes,  look 
ing  upon  him  there,  admit  it  is  a  remarkable 
figure  against  which  they  storm.  His  stature 
suggests  strength  and  repose,  but  something 
more  than  bulk  impresses  the  men  gazing  here 
5 


6  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

upon  him.  What  moves  them  in  spite  of  them 
selves  is  the  manifest  attitude  of  a  man  un 
afraid,  sincere  and  intent  upon  his  message,  not 
upon  himself. 

After  a  time  a  lull  comes  in  the  rioting  tor 
nado  of  noises  that  has  shaken  the  building. 
Instantly,  this  man,  standing  there  so  quietly, 
shoots  into  the  opening  a  shining  arrow  of  a 
sentence,  straight,  barbed,  and  singing  as  it 
flies.  At  the  sound  of  it,  uproar  redoubles. 
On  the  platform,  the  speaker  stands  and  waits, 
an  archer  with  bow  drawn.  At  the  next  lull, 
almost  before  the  crowd  is  aware,  he  has  loos 
ened  two  of  his  burning  shafts ;  at  the  next, 
three ;  at  the  next,  the  clamor  dies  away  and 
friends  and  foes  stand  under  the  charm  of  a 
silver  voice  that  rings  forth  one  fascinating  pe 
riod  after  another.  Hostile  forces  cease  to 
contend  on  the  floor.  After  a  moment  or  two 
comes  a  ripple  of  involuntary  applause.  Be 
fore  long  the  whole  rapt  audience  is  cheering. 
At  the  end  of  two  hours  it  thinks  the  man  may 
have  been  speaking  ten  minutes.  He  bows  and 
leaves  the  platform  amid  thundering  cheers, 
and  sown  behind  him  are  conviction  and  unper- 
ishing  seeds  of  thought. 

At  any  time  between  1837  and  1861  such 
a  scene  was  common  in  the  life  of  this  man. 


THE    ENLISTMENT  7 

Of  no  other  orator  that  ever  lived  are  such 
triumphs  recorded.  Wherever  he  goes  he 
sways  men  with  a  new  necromancy.  Audiences 
the  most  bitterly  hostile  seem  unable  to  with 
stand  his  peculiar  eloquence;  the  beautiful  bell- 
like  voice  is  wings  to  lofty  thought,  invincible 
logic  and  soul-searching  words;  even  the  minds 
fortified  against  reason  learn  from  his  lips. 
Yet,  in  his  long  life  of  ceaseless  activities,  he 
debated  for  no  crown,  argued  for  no  fees,  strove 
for  no  reward,  sought  no  place  nor  any  fame, 
cared  for  no  achievement  for  its  own  sake,  and 
used  his  unequaled  gifts  only  for  some  cause  of 
justice  or  freedom  in  which  he  could  earn  noth 
ing  but  obloquy,  hatred  and  isolation. 

This  is  the  career  of  Wendell  Phillips,  the 
most  marvelous  and  the  most  inspiring  in  his 
tory.  Here  was  a  man  endowed  with  every  con 
ceivable  advantage  for  the  winning  of  what  we 
call  success:  a  brilliant  and  powerful  mind 
trained  in  the  best  schools;  a  gift  of  extem 
poraneous  and  moving  eloquence,  an  attractive 
presence,  great  personal  magnetism,  a  famous 
lineage,  social  standing  and  prestige;  entered 
upon  a  profession  he  loved  and  for  which  he 
had  every  qualification,  with  hosts  of  powerful 
friends,  a  taste  for  public  affairs  and  public 
life,  an  almost  unequaled  aptitude  for  debate; 


8  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

a  young  man  with  every  avenue  of  preferment 
and  distinction  open  to  him.  He  deliberately 
abandoned  them  all,  and  like  a  religious  enthu 
siast  rising  above  every  thought  of  self,  made 
of  his  life  one  long  sacrifice  on  the  altars  of 
righteousness. 

No  man  ever  gave  up  more  for  the  sake  of 
his  faith.  All  his  brilliant  career  was  wrecked 
in  an  instant.  His  friends  and  his  family  de 
serted  and  repudiated  him.  Some  of  his  rela 
tives  declared  that  he  was  insane  and  planned 
to  have  him  confined  in  an  asylum.  His 
mother,  to  whom  he  was  most  tenderly  attached, 
condemned  his  course.  The  press  covered  him 
with  ridicule  and  abuse;  he  became  a  social 
pariah.  For  more  than  twenty  years  he  lived 
in  daily  danger  of  his  life,  with  a  price  on  his 
head;  to  face  such  gatherings  as  I  have  de 
scribed  and  worse,  to  stand  and  defy  mobs  that 
were  thirsting  for  his  blood,  became  his  all  but 
daily  experience.  At  old  Faneuil  Hall  in  Bos 
ton  men  will  show  you  now  the  little  back  stair 
case  down  which  he  was  whisked  to  safety  after 
his  speeches,  while  the  street  in  front  was  filled 
with  those  that  waited  to  lynch  him.  So  late 
as  January,  1861,  after  preaching  in  Theodore 
Parker's  church,  bodyguards  of  young  men  must 
needs  surround  and  protect  him  to  his  doors 


THE    ENLISTMENT  9 

that  he  might  not  be  murdered  for  quoting  the 
word  of  God  against  human  slavery. 

Through  all  this,  as  I  hope  to  show,  he 
walked  with  a  beautiful  serenity,  at  peace  with 
God  and  his  own  conscience.  Without  a  word 
of  complaint  he  accepted  the  place  he  had  made 
for  himself,  closed  his  law  office,  shut  the 
door  upon  his  profession,  took  full  in  the  face 
whatever  blows  passionate  hatred  could  give 
him.  I  think  he  even  had  foreknowledge  that 
the  malice  he  aroused  in  his  later  years  would 
pursue  him  after  death ;  that  it  would  deny  him 
his  place  among  the  world's  orators  and  belit 
tle  his  achievements.  Yet  his  philosophy  of 
conscience  never  failed  him ;  to  the  end  of  his 
life  he  never  ceased  from  the  task  he  had  laid 
upon  himself. 

When  a  cause  was  won,  and  in  the  natural 
revulsion  of  popular  feeling  men  sought  to  make 
him  its  hero,  he  put  aside  their  tributes  and  de 
manded  their  attention  to  the  next  unpopular 
reform. 

Compared  with  such  a  career,  the  stories  of 
the  men  that  on  grounds  of  material  triumph 
have  won  places  in  the  world's  regard  seem  but 
poor  indeed.  They  toiled  for  themselves,  or 
for  the  glory  of  achievement,  for  party  or  fac 
tion,  or  at  best  for  what  is  called  national 


10  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

success.  This  man's  single  and  unselfish  pur 
pose  was  to  win  better  conditions  for  the  un 
fortunate,  wherever  they  might  be,  to  strive 
against  injustice,  to  further  brotherhood,  to 
spread  liberty.  As  ardently  as  other  men 
sought  wealth  or  power  he  sought  the  Common 
Good.  When  to  this  singular  and  noble  aspira 
tion  we  add  a  life  so  pure  that  he  seemed  to 
his  contemporaries  to  be  without  a  human  weak 
ness,  surely  we  have  a  radiant  figure  before 
which  the  statues  of  our  military  champions 
shrink  and  the  records  of  greasy  and  self-seek 
ing  statesmen  grow  merely  contemptible.  In 
an  age  half-mad  about  material  success  and  po 
litical  honors,  such  a  life  is  the  only  model  for 
the  young,  and  the  only  light  worth  following. 
As  much  as  conscience  is  above  appetite  he 
shines  above  all  heroes  tainted  with  a  selfish 
purpose.  For  reasons  that  I  shall  deal  with 
hereafter,  every  possible  effort  has  been  made 
to  conceal  and  suppress  the  story  of  his  life ; 
yet  none  other  is  so  valuable  to  an  American, 
for  none  other  begins  to  reveal  so  clearly  how 
great  a  power  for  good  is  but  one  man  stand 
ing  alone,  if  he  be  not  afraid,  if  he  be  conse 
crated  to  a  worthy  cause,  and  if  he  rise  above 
a  personal  aim. 


THE    ENLISTMENT  11 

Mr.  Phillips  was  by  faith  and  conviction  the 
most  ardent  of  democrats,  but  his  lineage  and 
all  his  antecedents  were  what  is  called  aristo 
cratic.  His  family  was,  in  the  snobbish  phrase, 
one  of  the  best  in  New  England;  certainly  it 
was  one  of  the  most  distinguished.  It  dated 
in  America  back  to  1630,  when  the  Rev.  George 
Phillips,  who  had  been  rector  of  Buxted,  Eng 
land,  left  his  charge  on  some  issue  of  faith  and 
conscience  and  settled  at  Watertown,  in  the 
colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay.  From  him  Wen 
dell  was  in  the  seventh  generation  of  descent. 
All  the  men  between  had  been  eminent  in  colonial 
or  early  American  affairs,  being  noted  patriots, 
clergymen,  lawyers,  orators  or  public  servants. 
One  was  lieutenant-governor  of  Massachusetts, 
one  was  a  colonel,  one  a  member  of  the  gover 
nor's  council,  two  founded  the  famous  Phillips 
Academies  at  Exeter  and  Andover  and  a  chair 
of  theology  at  Dartmouth  College.  Wendell's 
father,  John  Phillips,  was  a  graduate  of  Har 
vard,  a  leader  of  the  bar  and  in  the  legislature, 
the  first  mayor  of  Boston,  and  held  by  the  com 
munity  in  profound  and  deserved  respect.  He 
lived  on  the  aristocratic  Beacon  Hill,  where 
Wendell,  a  fifth  son,  was  born  November  29, 
1811,  and  where  he  was  reared  in  an  atmosphere 


THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

of  decorum,  culture  and  as  much  luxury  as 
seemed  consistent  with  the  strict  piety  of  his 
parents. 

The  Puritan  household  was  serious  but 
kindly ;  the  children  were  early  trained  to  be 
self-respecting,  self-reliant  and  faithful  to  cer 
tain  rather  lofty  conceptions  of  duty  and  con 
duct.  One  of  the  rules  in  John  Phillips's  fam 
ily  was  "  never  ask  another  to  do  for  you  what 
you  can  do  yourself,  and  never  ask  another  to 
do  for  you  what  you  would  not  do  for  yourself 
if  you  could."  The  father  was  never  so  much 
of  an  aristocrat  that  he  did  not  believe  in  work 
ing  with  the  hands ;  each  of  the  boys  must  learn 
the  use  of  tools ;  and  under  this  tuition  Wen 
dell  became  something  of  a  carpenter,  a  craft 
for  which  he  never  quite  lost  his  preference. 
Acute  observers  have  pointed  out  that  in 
America  the  greatest  peril  lies  in  the  second 
generation  of  the  rich,  whose  members,  never 
trained  to  labor  and  reared  in  parasitic  sloth, 
grow  up  with  a  conviction  of  their  superior 
caste  more  arrogant  and  poisonous  than  can  be 
found  elsewhere  upon  earth.  His  own  native 
convictions  and  good  sense  would  have  saved 
Wendell  Phillips  in  any  event  from  such  a 
taint,  but  there  was  also  a  practical  grace  in 
the  fact  that  he  had  learned  to  work  with  his 


THE    ENLISTMENT  13 

hands.  In  after  years  he  saw  that  without 
such  work,  without  the  trained  hand  as  well  as 
the  trained  mind,  there  cannot  be  for  individ 
uals  or  society  the  most  wholesome  conditions, 
whether  mentally,  physically,  or  spiritually; 
and  he  never  forgot  the  respect  he  gained  at 
the  bench  for  the  men  that  create  the  world's 
wealth  and  furnish  the  world's  onward  impulse. 

In  his  boyhood  days  he  had  amusements  that 
showed  the  unusual  bent  of  his  intellect.  His 
near  neighbor  and  playmate  was  a  lad  named 
John  Lothrop  Motley,  himself  destined  to  a 
distinguished  career,  and  the  greatest  fun  they 
knew  was  to  get  into  the  Phillips  attic,  dress 
themselves  in  the  discarded  finery  of  another 
generation  and  enact  scenes  from  dramas  of 
their  own  and  other  contriving.  Even  then 
Phillips  had  a  taste  for  declamation,  and,  it  is 
said,  a  noticeably  fine  voice.  When  he  was  five 
years  old  he  was  wont  to  play  church,  with 
chairs  for  auditors  and  himself  in  an  extem 
porized  pulpit  as  the  preacher.  When  his 
father  asked  him  if  he  did  not  get  tired  of 
preaching  (his  harangues  being  apparently  of 
a  great  length),  he  said,  with  a  twinkle  of  dry 
and  characteristic  humor: 

"  No,  I  don't  get  tired,  but  it's  rather  hard 
on  the  chairs." 


14  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

He  was  fitted  at  the  famous  Boston  Latin 
School  (where  one  of  his  chums  and  dearest 
friends  was  Charles  Sumner)  and  went  thence 
to  Harvard.  In  college  he  was  distinguished 
as  the  most  brilliant  man  in  his  class  and  the 
leader  of  the  aristocratic  set.  The  position 
and  fame  of  his  family  gave  him  a  certain  pres 
tige,  but  his  wit  and  talent  would  have  made 
him  conspicuous  anywhere.  He  was  a  noted 
athlete ;  in  college,  the  champion  boxer,  oars 
man,  fencer  and  horseman  of  his  time.  He 
loved  these  things  for  their  own  sake  and  had 
pursued  them  under  difficulties,  for  in  those 
days  the  Boston  schools  sternly  discouraged 
athletics.  All  through  his  college  course  men 
prophesied  great  things  of  his  after  career. 
Every  good  gift  of  nature  seemed  to  be  his;  a 
powerful  frame,  perfect  health,  a  winning  pres 
ence,  a  capacious  mind  and  a  natural  disposi 
tion  toward  things  clean  and  good.  His  hab 
its  were  always  right ;  he  went  through  college 
without  a  smirch. 

When  he  had  been  graduated  he  entered  the 
law  school  under  Judge  Story,  who  seems  to 
have  been  greatly  taken  with  his  pupil  and 
predicted  for  him  an  extraordinary  career  at 
the  bar.  From  Judge  Story's  tutelage  he 
went  to  a  law  office  in  Lowell,  where  he  spent 


THE    ENLISTMENT  15 


six  months  and  first  met  Benjamin  F.  Butler, 
then  an  errand  boy  in  another  office.  Thence 
lie  returned  to  Boston,  opened  an  office  of  his 
own  in  Court  Street  and  began  at  once  to  have 
a  large  and  profitable  practise.  He  was  al 
ready  noted  equally  for  his  eloquence  and  his 
learning;  his  friends  clearly  foresaw  that  there 
was  no  high  place  in  the  nation  to  which  he 
might  not  reach. 

The  time  was  1833.  The  nation  was  sleep 
ing  serenely  upon  a  volcano  and  the  few  that 
suspected  the  fact  took  pains  not  to  betray 
their  suspicions.  About  3,000,000  Americans 
were  held  as  chattel  possessions  by  about 
300,000  other  Americans,  and  that  one  tremen 
dous  fact  constituted  the  volcano.  At  the 
time  of  the  founding  of  the  country,  all  men, 
North  and  South,  were  agreed  that  slavery  was 
wrong  and  must  some  day  be  abolished,  but 
neither  the  United  States  nor  any  other  nation 
had  then  awakened  to  the  unspeakable  iniquity 
of  the  institution.  The  first  slaves  in  the 
American  territory  had  been  convicts,  or  white 
men  kidnaped  in  England  and  sold  to  the  colo 
nial  planters ;  slavery  was  therefore  a  thing 
familiar  and  viewed  as  a  sanctioned  cus 
tom;  it  had  always  existed  somewhere  on  earth 
^  and  against  an  institution  so  ancient  and  re- 


16  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

spectable  the  country  was  disposed  to  move 
slowly,  even  after  the  eloquent  warnings  and 
appeals  of  Washington  and  Jefferson.  Still, 
it  did  move  and  slavery  was  well  on  its  way  to 
disappear  when  Eli  Whitney  changed  all  this 
with  his  invention  of  the  cotton  gin. 

That  brought  in  the  tremendous  power  of 
profits,  the  greatest  force  in  modern  life. 
Cotton  became  the  staple  of  the  whole  South 
ern  country,  slave  labor  was  employed  in  cul 
tivating  the  cotton,  in  a  short  time  it  was 
discovered  that  th'e  annual  average  profit  of  a 
slave's  labor  was  about  35  per  cent.,  and  in  the 
face  of  such  enormous  returns  all  moral  consid 
erations  and  all  the  arguments  of  the  wisest 
of  the  fathers  naturally  were  forgotten.  The 
South  came  to  look  upon  slavery  as  the  one 
source  of  its  sacred  prosperity.  The  North, 
getting  its  share  of  the  cotton  business,  came 
to  acquiesce  in  the  same  view,  and  for  many 
years  the  necessity  of  slavery  was  not  ques 
tioned.  Many  men  in  the  North  and  some 
even  in  the  South  did  not  in  their  souls  believe 
in  the  thing,  but  over  the  average  conscience 
the  great  fact  of  35  per  cent,  profit  rolled  an 
extinguishing  flood. 

From  this  state  of  lethal  acquiescence  the 
country  began  slowly  to  awake  chiefly  because 


THE    ENLISTMENT  17 

of  the  ceaseless  denunciations  of  one  remarkable 
man. 

William  Lloyd  Garrison  had  begun  life  as 
an  obscure  printer,  penniless  and  without  ad 
vantages  of  education,  and,  by  dint  of  repeat 
ing  his  own  passionate  protest  against  slavery, 
had  drawn  about  him  a  small  following  of  men 
and  women,  universally  deemed  to  be  crazy. 
After  the  passage  of  the  Missouri  Compromise 
in  1820,  anti-slavery  agitation  had  been  sup 
posed  to  be  silenced.  Garrison  made  himself 
intensely  hated  by  reviving  it. 

All  the  "  better  elements  "  at  the  North  sym 
pathized  with  the  South  about  slavery.  Lead 
ers  of  Northern  capital  and  wealth  ardently 
championed  it  as  beneficent  and  necessary; 
Northern  commercial  classes  were  united  in  its 
support;  Northern  pulpits  found  that  it  was 
specially  ordered  and  commanded  in  the  Bible 
and  to  oppose  it  was  a  form  of  blasphemy ; 
Northern  politicians  contended  in  subserviency 
to  the  slave-owning  element;  all  the  power  of 
Northern  Society  was  exerted  in  its  defense,  it 
being  definitely  and  forever  settled  that  to  own 
slaves  was  good  form,  and  to  object  to  slave- 
owning  was  to  read  oneself  out  of  the  social 
register.  Beyond  these  were  classes  that  tried 
to  prove  by  excess  of  devotion  to  the  slave- 


18  THE    STORY    OP  •  WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

owners'  cause  the  certainty  of  their  own  social 
eminence;  classes  that  violently  aped  their  su 
periors,  and  classes  that  did  not  care.  These 
latter  were  generally  of  an  ardent  profession 
of  patriotism.  Slavery  did  not  concern  them ; 
what  they  wanted  was  to  be  left  alone  and  to 
contemplate  undisturbed  the  surpassing  gran 
deur  and  greatness  of  their  country,  knowing 
quite  well  that  whatever  it  did  was  right 

Nothing  else  in  history  is  so  extraordinary 
as  the  one  fact  that  all  of  this  condition  of 
moral  turpitude,  and  all  of  the  succeeding  tur 
moil  that  ended  in  an  appalling  war,  were  based 
upon  the  profits  of  an  inconsiderable  number 
of  persons. 

In  1855,  when  the  total  population  of  the 
United  States  was  about  30,000,000,  the  num 
ber  of  persons  that  owned  slaves  was  348,214. 
Only  two  persons  owned  so  many  as  a  thousand 
slaves  each;  and  nine  owned  each  between  five 
hundred  and  a  thousand.  It  was  for  the  sake 
of  the  35  per  cent,  profit  of  348,214  persons 
that  the  country  came  to  civil  war  after  years 
of  practical  anarchy.  Contemplating  this  stu 
pendous  fact,  it  is  evident  that  we  ought  to 
learn  history  over  again ;  certainly  nothing  in 
the  existing  method  of  instruction  will  avail  to 
explain  such  an  anomaly. 


THE    ENLISTMENT  19 

But  if  we  can  once  come  to  understand  it 
aright  there  is  no  other  chapter  of  history  that 
is  so  valuable  for  instruction,  and  principally 
because  of  the  startling  parallel  it  affords  with 
the  national  situation  to-day. 

In  1833  there  was  no  obvious  reason  why 
the  North  should  have  been  particularly  alert 
in  championing  the  cause  of  the  comparatively 
small  band  of  Southern  slave  owners ;  or  at 
least  no  reason  that  a  just  man  could  deem  to 
be  sufficient  to  excuse  support  of  a  crime  so 
hideous  as  slavery;  and  yet  as  to-day  millions 
of  men  are  enrolled  in  defense  of  the  wage  sys 
tem  that  have  no  interest  in  it,  so  in  those  days 
millions  of  the  bitterest  opponents  of  Abolition 
were  to  be  found  among  Northern  business  men. 
For  these  strange  facts  the  hidden  reasons  then 
and  now  are  identical.  Capital  and  money 
sympathized  with  the  South  because  slaves 
were  property,  and  when  slavery  was  attacked 
all  property  was  thought  to  be  attacked;  also, 
because  all  about  the  world,  capital  stands  to 
gether.  The  commercial  classes  sympathized 
because  the  Northern  mills  lived  on  Southern 
cotton  and  Southern  cotton  was  grown  by  slave 
labor;  therefore,  to  attack  slavery  was  commer 
cial  high  treason ;  it  was  bad  for  business.  The 
pulpit  naturally  followed  the  lure  of  the  big 


20  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

pew  rents.  The  politicians  naturally  followed 
the  political  sutlers'  wagons ;  they  always  do. 
These  affinities  are  in  a  way  understandable, 
however  grotesque  and  silly.  But  the  weirdest 
aspect  of  all  was  this  thing  I  have  before  re 
ferred  to,  the  attitude  of  what  is  called  So 
ciety  ;  the  weirdest  and  the  most  pernicious. 
Society  set  the  example  and  pace  for  all  the 
other  elements,  far  exceeded  them  in  bitterness, 
inspired  them  with  murderous  hatred,  ap 
plauded  the  mobs  when  it  did  not  actually  lead 
them,  filled  the  press  with  fury,  ringed  the 
noses  of  clergymen  and  dragged  them  behind, 
indurated  the  public  conscience,  blasted  any 
agitator  with  the  damnation  of  its  disapproval, 
and  instigated  its  millions  of  bourgeois  imi 
tators  to  amazing  acts  of  violence.  And  the 
sweet  and  ^adequate  reason  that  animated  So 
ciety  was  that  the  South  had  all  the  social 
prestige  and  was  the  social  dictator.  Do  you 
know  why?  It  was  furthest  removed  from 
damning  labor,  always  the  badge  of  social  deg 
radation.  The  South  was  more  idle  than  the 
Nortjj ;  and  although  slavery  made  it  more  idle, 
it  was  by  virtue  of  its  superior  idleness  our 
hereditary  and  highest  aristocracy.  North 
ern  Society  looked  upon  Southern  Society  with 
such  awe-struck  reverence  as  that  wherewith  all 


THE    ENLISTMENT 

our  Society  now  regards  the  English  nobility. 
To  be  in  touch  with  Southern  social  leaders 
was  the  certificate  of  gentility ;  the  more  you 
hated  the  Negro,  the  more  vehemently  you  de 
fended  the  institution  of  slavery,  and  the  more 
laboriously  you  argued  for  the  348,214  and 
their  35  per  cent,  profit,  the  brighter  shone 
your  certificate. 

Every  feature  of  this  situation  we  have  since 
seen  reproduced  with  marvelous  fidelity  in  the 
conflict  against  the  wage  system. 

As  to-day  we  see  business  men  forming 
"  Citizens'  Alliances  "  to  uphold  the  employers 
in  strike  difficulties  wherein  business  men  have 
no  direct  concern,  so  in  1833  the  same  element 
formed  voluntary  associations  to  suppress  any 
agitation  of  the  question  of  slavery.  As  to-day 
the  business  men  in  a  strike  zone  form  the  mob 
that  shoots  and  deports  the  head  of  a  labor 
union,  so  in  1833  and  later  the  same  element 
formed  the  greater  part  of  the  mobs  that  broke 
up  anti-slavery  meetings  and  tarred  and 
feathered  anti-slavery  speakers.  As  to-day 
every  person  that  agitates  the  labor  issue  is 
blacklisted  by  the  press  and  shunned  by  So 
ciety,  so  in  1833  men  that  objected  to  slavery 
found,  in  the  very  heart  of  the  North,  a  taboo 
raised  against  them,  their  families  and  their 


%2  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

business.  As  to-day  the  whole  force  of  com 
merce  is  arrayed  in  defence  of  the  profits 
arising  from  the  wage  system,  so  in  1833  sim 
ilar  forces  were  determined  there  should  be  no 
attacks  upon  chattel  slavery. 

The  close  parallel  does  not  fail  even  when 
we  come  to  labor,  for  it  must  be  admitted  that 
in  1833  as  to-day  labor  was  often  singularly 
blind  to  its  own  injuries.  In  a  material  way 
it  suffered  from  slavery  more  than  any  other 
element,  and  yet  it  often  seemed  indifferent. 
Not  always,  for  among  the  strongest  oppo 
nents  of  slavery  came  many  from  this  class ; 
but  still  the  spectacle  was  sometimes  witnessed 
of  working  people  violently  attacking  men  that 
were  only  striving  to  end  a  condition  inimical 
to  labor.  This  is  not  quite  the  anomaly  it 
seems.  We  are  to  remember  that  the  whole 
subject  was  most  ably  and  persistently  be 
fogged  or  distorted  by  practically  the  entire 
press,  so  that  the  very  name  of  anti-slavery 
agitation  became  invested  in  the  public  mind 
with  merely  hateful  and  grotesque  significance. 
To  be  an  ^anti-slavery  agitator  wras  to  be  a  pes 
tilent  demagogue,  an  enemy  of  peace  and  pros 
perity,  and  a  traitor  to  the  proud  American 
nation  and  its  flag. 

Under  the  stress  of  this  hysteria  very  strange 


THE    ENLISTMENT  %& 

things  were  said  and  done.  Public  men  of  emi 
nence  seemed  to  be  always  on  their  knees  to  the 
348,214  slave  owners.  Northern  governors 
like  Edward  Everett  professed  pride  and  pleas 
ure  in  the  capture  of  runaway  slaves  fleeing 
toward  Canada  and  freedom.  The  Rev.  Dr. 
Dewey,  a  prominent  Unitarian  clergyman,  de 
clared  that  he  would  return  his  own  mother  to 
slavery  if  to  do  so  would  help  to  preserve  the 
Union.  The  President  of  Brown  University 
denounced  the  agitation  of  the  question  of 
slavery  and  said  that  for  Congress  to  pass  an 
Abolition  act  for  the  District  of  Columbia 
would  be  bad  faith.  Practically  the  entire  col 
lege  and  university  element  of  the  North  was 
of  his  opinion  and  strenuously  opposed  any 
talk  of  Abolition.  All  about  the  North,  known 
Abolitionists  were  assaulted,  driven  from  their 
homes,  hunted,  tarred  and  feathered,  stripped, 
beaten,  shot  at,  and  sometimes  killed.  The 
Governor  of  South  Carolina  declared  slavery  to 
be  the  corner-stone  of  the  Republic  and  de 
manded  that  laws  should  be  passed  to  punish 
with  death  any  interference  with  or  discussion 
of  it.  Edward  Everett  wished  Massachusetts 
to  make  a  penal  offense  of  any  spoken  or 
printed  utterance  against  slavery.  Four 
Southern  legislatures  demanded  of  the  North- 


24  THE    STOEY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

ern  States  that  all  Abolition  societies  should 
be  suppressed.  More  than  one  Northern  State 
started  dutifully  to  obey.  The  State  of 
Georgia  kept  a  standing  reward  of  five  thou 
sand  dollars  for  the  kidnaping  of  William 
Lloyd  Garrison.  A  wealthy  planter  circulated 
a  hand-bill  offering  rewards  for  the  killing  of 
anti-slavery  leaders,  the  prices  varying  accord 
ing  to  the  prominence  of  the  man  designated. 
The  Congress  of  the  United  States,  with  the 
aid  of  Northern  votes,  passed  a  law  forbidding 
the  offering  of  petitions  to  abolish  slavery  in 
the  District  of  Columbia  or  elsewhere. 

All  for  the  sake  of  the  35  per  cent,  profits 
of  the  348,214  persons  that  held  slaves! 

The  newspapers,  preachers,  editors,  teach 
ers,  news  agencies,  college  presidents,  social 
reformers,  philanthropists  and  tradesmen  that 
in  our  own  day  have  championed  the  500,000 
persons  deriving  benefit  from  the  wage  system 
have  never  displayed  a  more  touching  fidelity. 

Against  this  iron-clad  fortress  of  prejudice 
Garrison  began  to  hammer  with  his  bare  hands. 
At  first  nobody  heeded  him.  Then  the  commer 
cial  gentlemen  looked  down  the  wall  side,  saw 
him  at  work  all  alone  and  laughed.  Then  he 
began  to  annoy  their  fat  souls  by  disturbing 
their  quiet,  so  they  undertook  to  kill  him.  It 


THE    ENLISTMENT  25 

was  one  of  their  genial  attempts  in  this  direc 
tion  that  started  Wendell  Phillips  upon  the 
work  of  his  life.  In  Washington  Street,  Bos 
ton,  a  mob  of  "  gentlemen  of  standing  and 
property,"  a  broadcloth  mob  of  the  leaders  and 
saviors  of  Society,  had  seized  Garrison  and  was 
about  to  hang  him.  In  Boston;  cradle  of  lib 
erty  and  that  sort  of  thing;  in  Boston,  on  Oc 
tober  21,  1835.  Garrison  had  been  saying  in 
Boston  a  few  words  in  favor  of  human  free 
dom,  and  so  a  mob  of  gentlemen  had  a  rope 
around  him  and  was  dragging  him  along  Wash 
ington  Street  to  hang  him.  He  had  said  his 
few  wrords  to  a  company  of  about  thirty  women 
that  sat  in  a  hall  they  had  hired  and  paid  for 
to  hear  him,  and  the  mayor  of  Boston  had 
burst  into  the  room  and  had  driven  the  women 
into  the  street;  whereupon  the  mob  of  gentle 
men  seized  Garrison,  and  was  dragging  him 
along  with  the  rope  around  him  to  hang  him 
for  talking  in  favor  of  human  liberty.  In 
Boston,  fifty-nine  years  after  the  Declaration 
of  Independence. 

Phillips  was  sitting  in  his  office  nearby  and 
heard  the  uproar  the  gentlemen  made,  for  of 
course  they  were  very  angry.  He  went  forth 
to  learn  the  occasion.  There  was  Garrison 
with  the  rope  around  him  being  dragged  down 


26  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

the  street.  Phillips  looked  attentively  upon 
his  face,  for  he  had  never  seen  the  like  before. 
It  was  very  pale,  but  calm  and  sweet,  as  if  the 
man  were  sustained  to  his  death  by  some  noble 
and  lofty  passion,  like  that  of  a  Christian  mar 
tyr.  The  lips  uttered  no  protest  and  the 
hands  were  not  lifted  against  the  rope ;  the  man 
strode  along,  erect,  resolute  and  self-contained. 

"Who  is  that?"  said  Phillips  to  another 
spectator  of  this  scene. 

"  Why,  that's  Garrison  —  the  damned  Abo 
litionist,  and  they're  going  to  hang  him !  " 

The  mob  and  the  violence  shocked  and  ap 
palled  Phillips's  fastidious  sense  of  decency  and 
reciprocal  rights.  He  thought  that  the  Bos 
ton  regiment,  a  famous  militia  band  of  which 
he  was  an  officer,  ought  to  be  called  out  to  dis 
perse  the  rioters.  His  colonel  pointed  out  to 
him  that  the  regiment  was  in  the  mob. 

He  went  back  to  his  office  and  began  to 
think  profoundly  about  "  the  damned  Abolition 
ist  "  and  his  cause.  He  had  never  before  paid 
much  attention  to  the  slavery  issue ;  in  a  gen 
eral  way  he  was  opposed  to  slavery,  but,  like 
all  other  young  men  in  his  station,  he  deemed 
it  settled  by  the  Missouri  Compromise  and  not 
a  vital  question  of  the  day.  But  to  hang  a 
man  for  his  opinions  —  that  assaulted  the  very 


THE    ENLISTMENT 

foundations  of  the  faith  he  had  built  for  him 
self.  Because  the  key  note  of  his  character 
and  to  a  great  extent  the  explanation  of  his 
career,  lay  in  this  one  fact,  that  mentally  he 
was  a  child  of  revolution.  He  had  made  close 
and  sympathetic  studies  of  the  American  and 
French  revolutions  and  arrived  at  the  con 
clusion  that  in  all  secular  history  these  were  the 
most  important  events.  His  researches  had 
not  revealed  to  him  the  theory  later  day  think 
ers  have  discovered,  apparently  by  clairvoy 
ance,  that  the  American  struggle  was  carried 
on  by  smugglers  and  other  depraved  men  for 
merely  selfish  ends;  that  Samuel  Adams  was  a 
trickster  and  Washington  and  LaFayette  a 
pair  of  congenial  land  thieves.  To  his  mind 
the  American  revolution  represented  a  great 
forward  step  in  the  human  advance  and  the  men 
that  took  part  in  it  were  soldiers  in  the  eternal 
cause  of  man.  Among  these  his  favorite  hero 
was  James  Otis  standing  forth  to  defy  the  king 
and  to  risk  his  life  for  free  speech.  Free  speech 
seemed  always  to  Phillips  the  most  important 
of  human  rights,  for  it  was  the  right  by  which 
man  defended  the  others.  But,  seventy  years 
after  the  heroic  achievement  of  James  Otis,  a 
mob  takes  the  place  of  a  king  and  denies  the 
same  right  that  Otis  upheld.  Neither  the  king 


£8  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

nor  the  mob  could  possibly  be  right;  Garrison 
was  a  still  more  heroic  figure  than  Otis.  As 
to  the  cause  that  he  spoke  for,  how  could  hu 
man  slavery  be  defended  or  even  excused? 
Thus  he  pondered,  that  day  and  many  days 
afterward,  while  he  tried  to  adjust  some  balance 
between  the  accepted  state  of  society  and  the 
principles  he  knew  for  truth. 

He  was  in  fact,  close  upon  the  first  great 
turning  point  in  his  life  and  as  so  often  hap 
pens  in  such  cases  a  mere  accident  brought  in 
the  deciding  factor.  Not  long  after  the  day 
of  the  respectable  mob  in  Washington  Street, 
Phillips  and  Sumner  were  invited  to  join  a 
coaching  party  to  Greenfield  and  to  meet  a 
young  woman  described  as  charming,  talented 
and  brilliant,  by  name,  Ann  Terry  Greene. 
The  morning  dawned  cold  and  stormy  and 
Sumner  refused  to  go  forth,  declaring  that  no 
young  woman  was  worth  braving  such  a  storm 
to  meet.  Phillips  kept  the  engagement.  Ann 
Terry  Greene  proved  to  be  one  of  the  thirty 
women  that  the  mayor  of  Boston  had  driven 
from  their  hall  on  the  day  that  Garrison  so 
narrowly  escaped  lynching.  She  was  a  fervent 
Abolitionist ;  she  talked  Abolition  to  Phillips  all 
the  way  to  Greenfield  and  back.  He  became 
fully  converted  to  the  cause,  fell  in  love  with 


THE    ENLISTMENT  %\) 

his  instructress,  married  her  October  12,  1837, 
and  took  into  his  life  one  of  its  most  powerful 
influences. 

As  a  rule,  a  man  that  does  anything  unusual 
in  this  world  does  it  under  the  inspiration  of 
some  woman.  Whether  what  he  does  makes  for 
good  or  ill  commonly  depends  upon  the  woman's 
nature.  It  happened  that  Ann  Terry  Greene 
was  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  women  of 
her  times.  She  was  a  natural  insurgent  and 
natural  reformer.  To  some  women  the  world 
is  a  mere  parade  ground  for  dress  patterns. 
To  her  it  was  a  battlefield  resounding  with 
ceaseless  conflict.  All  about  her  she  saw  wrong 
and  injustice;  she  yearned  and  burned  to  have 
every  wrong  abolished  and  every  injustice  cor 
rected.  Hers  was  no  limited  field  of  vision; 
any  kind  of  injustice,  anywhere,  was  enough  to 
stir  her  resentment.  By  some  irony  of  fate, 
being  a  soul  so  combative,  she  was,  or  thought 
she  was,  a  helpless  invalid,  so  that  her  part  in 
the  conflict  must  be  exerted  through  others. 
She  made  of  her  husband  her  capable  soldier 
and  he  testified  that  all  his  life  she  went  before 
him  into  every  cause  he  espoused. 

At  the  house  of  Miss  Greene's  uncle,  Henry 
G.  Chapman,  not  long  after  the  coaching  party, 
Phillips  madej  the  acquaintance  of  Garrison. 


30  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

The  two  were  irresistibly  drawn  to  each  other. 
Phillips  perceived  that  here  was  a  prophet  bear 
ing  the  fire  of  a  great  cause  and  upon  him 
slowly  settled  the  conviction  that  his  place  was 
at  the  side  of  this  pure-souled  apostle  of  right 
eousness.  In  such  an  issue  he  could  not  palter 
with  his  conscience,  nor  refuse  to  be  honest  with 
himself,  nor  count  the  cost  of  being  true.  De 
liberately  he  came  to  this  decision ;  having 
reached  it,  weighing  all  together,  he  gave  him 
self  up  to  follow  it  without  reservation.  On 
March  28,  1837,  he  attended  the  quarterly 
meeting  at  Lynn  of  the  Massachusetts  Anti- 
Slavery  Society  and  there  he  made  his  first 
Abolitionist  speech. 

Next  day  the  strange  news  went  about  aris 
tocratic  Boston  as  of  a  great  and  appalling 
disaster  that  men  could  hardly  credit.  Noth 
ing  in  the  history  of  the  American  Brahmin 
caste  had  so  shaken  its  moldy  fibres.  Wendell 
Phillips  had  been  its  pet,  its  pride,  the  example 
of  heredity  and  lineage  to  which  it  pointed, 
the  brilliant  son  of  its  first  family.  He  might 
have  rolled  drunken  in  the  gutter,  or  wasted 
himself  in  dissipation,  or  committed  crimes,  and 
held  his  caste  unimpeached.  But  to  attack  ex 
isting  conditions  and  to  range  himself  with  the 


THE    ENLISTMENT  31 

victims    of   those   conditions   was    to   be   indeed 
beyond  hope. 

In  the  face  of  the  self-made  pariah,  Society 
indignantly  slammed  the  doors,  while  his  family 
writhed  in  the  agony  of  an  ineffable  shame.  If 
he  had  only  died !  said  his  relatives ;  the  grave 
had  no  pang  like  this.  At  the  present  dis 
tance  and  to  souls  not  perfectly  attuned  to 
Society's  distinctions  there  appears  a  certain 
element  of  the  comic  in  their  distress,  but 
it  was  to  them  very  real  and  tragic.  Some 
tried  to  parry  the  blow  by  saying  he  had  gone 
suddenly  insane ;  you  can  not  blame  Respectable 
Persons  for  the  acts  of  a  madman.  In  the 
house  of  Worldly  Wiseman  the  puzzle  was  un 
readable.  That  a  young  man  with  every  ad 
vantage  and  every  chance  of  success  should  cast 
away  his  life  was  inconceivable  folly.  Some 
commentators  found  relief  in  the  fortunate  fact 
that  his  poor,  dear  father  had  not  lived  to  see 
this  day.  All  the  cost  of  his  education  wasted, 
all  the  traditions  of  his  family  dishonored,  a 
young  life  already  in  ruins  —  how  melancholy 
was  this  spectacle!  But  such  were  the  fruits 
of  the  spirit  of  social  unrest  abroad  in  the  land, 
and  thus  was  youth  misled  by  pestilent  agi 
tators. 


THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

Upon  the  young  man  thus  sadly  gone  astray 
these  comments  fell  without  visible  effect. 
Having  determined  which  way  his  duty  led, 
thither  he  went  rejoicing.  The  storm  of  crit 
icism  he  faced  with  the  same  composure  with 
which  he  faced  mobs ;  no  one  ever  saw  that  un 
der  that  faultless  bearing  he  was  hurt;  but 
beyond  doubt  he  paid  the  price,  full  measure. 
He  loved  friendship,  he  was  among  the  most 
companionable  of  men,  he  valued  highly  the 
approval  of  his  family ;  it  was  not  without  a 
wrench  that  he  took  himself  outside  of  his  caste. 
For  almost  fifty  years  there  poured  upon  his 
head  a  ceaseless  flood  of  hatred,  ridicule  and 
misrepresentation ;  no  man  heard  him  complain 
nor  repine  at  his  lot,  and  the  bitterest  personal 
attack  seldom  provoked  any  retort,  even  when 
he  was  outrageously  lied  about.  All  he  took 
in  silence,  looking  far  ahead  to  the  goal  and 
thinking  of  himself  as  an  instrument  of  reform ; 
an  instrument  whose  feelings  and  fame  were  of 
no  importance.  Silently  he  withdrew  from  the 
old  scenes  and  the  old  circles  and  took  for  his 
new  friends  Garrison  and  the  men  and  women 
that,  like  Garrison,  held  that  in  the  face  of  mon 
strous  injustice  the  just  man  has  no  right  to 
a  life  of  ease  and  pleasure.  Other  historic 
figures  have  enrolled  themselves  in  unpopular 


THE    ENLISTMENT  33 

causes,  but  usually,  I  think,  for  the  sake  of 
personal  aim  or  a  personal  hate.  Wendell 
Phillips  remains  the  one  conspicuous  example 
of  unstained  purity  of  motive.  From  the 
causes  he  espoused  he  had  nothing  to  gain  but 
loneliness,  obscurity  and  disgrace. 


II 

THE  FIRST  BATTLES 

His  real  entrance  as  orator  and  agitator 
upon  the  turbulent  stage  of  his  day  was  made 
in  dramatic  fashion.  On  December  8,  1837, 
when  he  had  just  passed  his  twenty-sixth  birth 
day,  a  mass  meeting  was  called  at  Faneuil  Hall 
to  protest  against  the  murder  of  the  Rev. 
Elijah  P.  Lovejoy,  at  Alton,  Illinois;  an  event 
that  was  to  be  great  in  American  history, 
though  at  the  time  no  one  so  deemed  it.  Love- 
joy,  who  was  not  an  Abolitionist,  by  the  way, 
had  been  the  editor  of  a  religious  newspaper  at 
St.  Louis.  A  Negro  in  St.  Louis  killed  an  offi 
cer  that  was  trying  to  arrest  him  and  a  mob 
broke  into  the  jail  where  the  Negro  was  con 
fined  and  burned  him  alive.  Lovejoy,  in  his 
journal,  commented  severely  upon  the  farcical 
judicial  proceedings  that  followed  this  event 
and  the  mob  wrecked  his  printing  office. 

He  moved  what  was  left  of  his  enterprise  to 
Alton,  on  what  was  called  Free  Soil,  where  he 
34 


THE    FIRST    BATTLES  35 

believed  he  would  be  safe.  Two  presses  that 
he  landed  were  successively  destroyed  by  mobs. 
He  obtained  a  third  and  asked  protection  of 
the  mayor.  The  mayor  said  he  was  unable  to 
preserve  order,  but  authorized  Love  joy  to  de 
fend  himself.  A  mob  gathered,  killed  Love  joy 
and  threw  his  press  into  the  river. 

In  Boston,  the  number  of  persons  that  de 
sired  to  protest  against  this  outrage  was  not 
large  but  was  fairly  courageous.  To  lessen 
the  extreme  likelihood  of  bloodshed  the  meeting 
was  held  in  the  morning.  Faneuil  Hall  was 
filled,  more  than  half  of  the  audience  being 
without  sympathy  with  the  purpose  of  the 
meeting  and  many  disposed  to  make  trouble  if 
they  could.  William  Ellery  Channing  and 
others  spoke;  resolutions  were  offered  de 
nouncing  Love  joy's  murder;  when  James 
Tricothie  Austin,  attorney-general  of  Massa 
chusetts,  wrell  known,  able  and  popular,  pushed 
his  way  to  the  edge  of  the  gallery  and  delivered 
a  skilful  and  bitter  attack  upon  the  resolutions 
and  the  previous  speakers.  He  defended  the 
mob  at  Alton,  likening  it  to  the  men  that  threw 
the  tea  into  Boston  Harbor  and  to  other 
patriots  of  the  American  Revolution.  Love- 
joy,  he  said,  had  brought  his  death  upon  him 
self  and  had  died  as  the  fool  dieth ;  and  he 


36  THE    STOEY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

fiercely  rebuked  Dr.  Channing,  who  was  a  cler 
gyman,  for  taking  part  in  the  present  meet 
ing. 

At  Austin's  first  sentence,  the  pro-slavery 
element  in  the  hall  cheered  vehemently,  and  as 
he  proceeded  it  was  evident  that  he  was  carry 
ing  with  him  the  majority  of  his  hearers.  The 
defeat  of  the  resolutions  was  imminent,  as  the 
contending  factions  roared  and  struggled. 
Phillips  was  standing  among  the  spectators 
on  the  main  floor,  for  in  those  days  Faneuil 
Hall  had  no  seats.  As  Austin  ended  amid 
tremendous  cheering,  Phillips  unexpectedly 
leaped  upon  the  platform  and  stood  forth  to 
answer  him.  The  crowd  saw  before  them  a 
young  man,  tall,  fair,  with  face  and  form  ex 
pressive  of  power  and  resolution,  waiting  to 
speak.  Its  sheer  curiosity  silenced  it  and,  in 
a  moment,  out  boomed,  in  that  strange,  melodi 
ous  voice,  the  first  piercing  sentence. 

Clamor  redoubled  at  once;  there  were  cries 
of  "Question!"  "Go  on!"  "Hear  him!" 
and  so  on.  With  the  next  lull  in  the  storm 
came  the  next  sentence;  in  another  moment  the 
young  orator  was  launched  upon  one  of  his 
most  famous  orations.  It  was  a  faultless  speci 
men  of  his  style;  compact,  restrained,  direct, 
without  a  wasted  word,  and  in  spite  of  the  re- 


THE    FIRST    BATTLES  37 

straint,    burning    with    feeling.     It    contained 
some  immortal  sentences. 

Sir,  when  I  heard  the  gentleman  lay  down  prin 
ciples  which  place  the  murderers  of  Alton  side  by 
side  with  Otis  and  Hancock,  with  Quincy  and 
Adams,  I  thought  those  pictured  lips  [pointing  to 
the  portraits  in  the  hall]  would  have  broken  into 
voice  to  rebuke  the  recreant  American  —  the  slan 
derer  of  the  dead! 

In  one  passage  he  struck  in  this,  his  first 
great  public  address,  a  keynote  to  which  in  the 
closing  years  of  his  life  he  was  often  to  return, 
and  I  think  it  is  interesting  that  he  had  found 
so  early  a  broad,  sociological  basis  for  his  faith. 

Presumptuous  to  assert  the  freedom  of  the  press 
on  American  ground !  Is  the  assertion  of  such 
freedom  before  the  age?  So  much  before  the  age 
as  to  leave  one  no  right  to  make  it  because  it  dis 
pleases  the  community?  Who  invents  this  libel  on 
his  country?  It  is  this  very  thing  which  entitles 
Lovejoy  to  greater  praise;  the  disputed  right  which 
provoked  the  Revolution  —  taxation  without  rep 
resentation  —  is  far  beneath  that  for  which  he 
died ! 

At  this,  the  audience,  which  had  been  hang 
ing  intent  upon  his  words  as  they  came  flying 
forth  without  halt  in  the  perfect  mastery  of  his 
art,  broke  into  a  violent  clamor  of  protest  and 
the  disorder  began  again.  Possibly  Phillips 
had  stirred  it  for  the  express  purpose  of  quell- 


38  THE    STOEY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

ing  it  with  one  of  his  irresistible  climaxes.     At 
the  first  cessation  of  the  noise  he  said : 

One  word,  gentlemen.  As  much  as  thought  is 
better  than  money,  so  much  is  the  cause  in  which 
Lovejoy  died  nobler  than  a  mere  question  of  taxes. 
James  Otis  thundered  in  this  hall  when  the  king 
did  but  touch  his  pocket.  Imagine,  if  you  can,  his 
indignant  eloquence  had  England  offered  to  put  a 
gag  upon  his  lips! 

That  was  the  turning  point  of  the  battle. 
Thenceforward  he  carried  his  audience  on  the 
surge  of  his  eloquence  and  when  he  made  an 
end  the  resolutions  were  carried  overwhelmingly. 

The  impressions  made  by  this  speech  upon 
the  persons  who  heard  it  seem  to  have  been 
extraordinary.  Dr.  Channing  frequently  re 
ferred  to  it  as  an  amazing  flight  of  eloquence, 
the  power  of  Phillips's  voice  over  the  angry 
crowd  seeming  to  be  almost  inexplicable.  Oli 
ver  Johnson,  who  was  present  that  day,  thought 
that  the  report  of  it  was  only  a  pale  reflection 
of  the  lightning  that  came  from  the  orator's 
lips.  One  effect  of  it  was  to  put  Phillips  into 
a  commanding  position  in  the  anti-slavery 
movement,  and  another  was  to  accelerate  the 
isolation  that  had  been  coming  upon  him  from 
the  time  he  announced  his  adhesion  to  Garri 
son's  cause.  His  law  practise  was  dwindling; 


THE    FIRST    BATTLES  S9 

a  man  cannot  very  well  practise  law  in  a  com 
munity,  part  of  which  regards  him  as  a  lunatic 
and  the  rest  as  a  dangerous  firebrand.  He  had 
become  the  idol  of  the  little  band  of  Abolition 
ists,  but  he  had  the  intense  hatred  of  the  aris 
tocracy  for  he  had  committed  what  is  in  all 
ages  the  unpardonable  crime.  He  had  turned 
against  his  own  caste. 

In  1839  he  took  his  wife  abroad  for  her 
health  and  in  London  was  the  hero  of  a  singu 
lar  episode  that  I  must  tell  later.  In  18-il  he 
returned  to  Boston.  Soon  afterward  occurred 
there  one  of  the  first  of  the  famous  fugitive 
slave  cases  that  were  subsequently  the  occasion 
of  some  of  his  most  searching  eloquence.  A 
Virginia  Negro  named  Latimer,  having  made 
his  escape  from  his  owner,  was  detected  and 
arrested.  An  effort  was  made  to  prevent  his 
return  to  slavery  and  a  Boston  judge  ruled 
that  the  slave  was  property,  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  authorized  the  owner  of 
slave  property  to  seize  it  wherever  he  found  it, 
and  Latimer  must  be  returned.  The  event 
struck  deep  at  Phillips's  basic  faith.  To  his 
mind  the  people  of  Massachusetts  were  impelled 
by  reverence  for  a  piece  of  parchment  to  com 
mit  an  act  of  abhorrent  wrong  and  injustice, 
violating  natural  conscience  and  the  rights  that 


40  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

are  above  all  constitutions.  He  vehemently 
protested  at  Faneuil  Hall,  but  he  did  more  than 
protest.  In  accordance  with  his  belief  that  a 
man's  life  should  in  every  way  square  with  his 
convictions,  he  closed  his  law  office  and  aban 
doned  his  profession.  A  lawyer  swears  to  up 
hold  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 
To  Mr.  Phillips,  that  Constitution,  inasmuch 
as  it  recognized  and  defended  man's  ownership 
in  a  fellow  man,  was  "  a  covenant  with  death 
and  a  league  with  hell."  Therefore  he  could 
not  consistently  uphold  it.  He  took  a  small 
house  at  No.  26  Essex  Street,  and  thenceforth, 
isolated  except  for  his  fellow  Abolitionists,  he 
devoted  all  his  life  to  battling  for  the  reforms 
in  which  he  believed. 

One  of  these  in  which  he  was  a  conspicuous 
leader  sought  to  improve  the  status  of  women. 
His  mind  was  so  constituted  that  against  any 
condition  of  injustice,  anywhere,  in  Ireland  or 
Russia,  in  the  attitude  of  men  toward  women 
or  of  the  State  toward  prisoners,  it  instinc 
tively  revolted.  In  the  view  of  Mr.  Phillips, 
as  of  Mr.  Garrison,  women  were  entitled  to 
every  right  enjoyed  by  men,  and  the  laws  and 
customs  based  upon  the  alleged  inferiority  of 
women  were  fossils  remaining  from  the  barbar 
ous  ages.  Many  women  were  in  the  anti- 


THE    FIRST    BATTLES  41 

slavery  movement ;  indeed,  its  women  were  often 
abler  than  its  men.  Lydia  Maria  Child,  Lu- 
cretia  Mott,  Sarah  and  Angelina  Grirnke,  and 
Abby  Kelly  Foster  were  clearly  the  intellectual 
equals  of  any  living  men.  But  the  custom  was 
very  rigid  that  women  should  take  no  part  in 
public  affairs ;  they  could  not  vote  and  appar 
ently  it  was  held  that  they  had  properly  no 
other  rights.  Garrison  and  Phillips  strove  to 
give  them  equal  place  with  men  in  the  Abolition 
movement,  and  it  is  an  odd  fact  that  this 
was  the  first  rock  upon  which  the  anti-slavery 
movement  split. 

Those  that  believed  woman's  part  in  life  to 
be  silence  and  knitting  withdrew  and  flocked 
by  themselves.  Presently  they  became  involved 
in  schemes  of  compromise  and  political  action 
(to  which  Garrison  and  Phillips  were  opposed) 
and  trickled  into  the  short-lived  and  futile 
Liberty  party,  finally  emerging  from  that  bar 
ren  waste  to  rejoin  their  former  comrades  with 
actual  Abolition  in  sight. 

But  the  issue  about  women  came  sharply  to 
a  head  while  the  Phillipses  were  in  London. 
They  had  been  appointed  delegates  to  an  inter 
national  anti-slavery  conference  organized  by 
the  British  and  Foreign  Anti-Slavery  Society. 
In  Great  Britain  the  prejudice  against  admit- 


4#  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL,    PHILLIPS 

ting  women  to  any  share  in  public  affairs  was 
even  stronger  than  in  America,  and  woman's 
position  in  general  was  worse.  The  men  in 
charge  of  the  convention  refused  to  allow  Mrs. 
Phillips  and  the  other  American  women  dele 
gates  to  be  admitted.  As  soon  as  the  delib 
erations  were  opened,  Mr.  Phillips  sprang  at 
the  face  of  British  conservatism  with  a  resolu 
tion  for  the  seating  of  all  delegates  with  cre 
dentials  from  any  anti-slavery  society.  British 
conservatism  was  painfully  shocked.  Mr.  Phil 
lips  shocked  it  again  by  delivering,  in  the  de 
bate  upon  his  resolution,  a  powerful  argument 
in  behalf  of  equality  for  women.  It  was  heard 
far  beyond  the  convention  hall,  for  the  press 
took  up  the  issue  it  raised  and  a  fierce  discus 
sion  arose  that  can  hardly  be  said  to  have 
ceased  again  until  it  came  to  flower  in  the 
great  British  suffrage  movement  of  this  day. 

But  in  the  convention  hall  Mr.  Phillips  was 
defeated.  The  strength  of  British  conserva 
tism  was  too  great.  For  no  other  reason  than 
custom,  the  women  delegates  were  not  admitted 
to  the  floor  of  the  convention  but  were  herded 
into  the  gallery  as  spectators,  where,  when 
Garrison  came,  he  insisted  upon  taking  his 
place  among  them.  He  would  not  sit  as  a  del 
egate  in  a  convention  that  declared  men  to  be 


THE    FIRST    BATTLES  43 

better  than  women.  Phillips  continued  to  fight 
from  the  floor.  He  and  Garrison  became  ex 
ceedingly  unpopular  in  consequence  and  at  the 
close  of  the  conference  were  conspicuously 
slighted  at  the  final  meeting  in  Exeter  Hall. 
Incidentally,  the  conference  failed  to  be  of  any 
use  to  the  anti-slavery  movement,  which  it  was 
intended  to  foster,  but  proved  of  much  use  to 
the  woman  suffrage  movement,  which  it  was  in 
tended  to  discourage  —  a  pleasing  illustration 
of  the  eternal  futility  of  the  reactionary  mind. 

It  was  when  her  husband  left  her  to  make 
his  argument  in  behalf  of  women  that  Ajm 
Terry  Phillips  addressed  to  him  a  remark  that 
subsequently  became  famous.  She  said: 

"  Wendell,  don't  shilly-shally." 

There  was,  in  fact,  the  smallest  likelihood 
that  he  should  ever  shilly-shally  about  any 
thing,  but  the  mind  of  Mrs.  Phillips,  shut  in  an 
apparently  frail  body,  was  of  such  uncompro 
mising  resolution  that  she  sometimes  frightened 
the  casual  listener,  and  what  was  unpardon 
able  weakness  in  her  view  would  have  seemed  to 
the  average  person  no  more  than  an  agreeable 
amenity. 

In  his  arguments  for  woman  suffrage  Phil 
lips,  in  his  usual  lucid  way,  stated  the  whole 
case  and  seeing  far  beyond  any  of  his  contem- 


44  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

poraries  foreshadowed  the  industrial  woman  of 
the  Twentieth  century.  One  of  his  admirable 
addresses  contained  this : 

The  subject  is  so  large,  that  it  might  well  fill 
days  instead  of  hours.  It  covers  the  whole  sur 
face  of  American  society.  It  touches  religion, 
purity,  political  economy,  wages,  the  safety  of 
cities,  the  growth  of  ideas,  the  very  success  of  our 
experiment.  If  this  experiment  of  self-govern 
ment  is  to  succeed,  it  is  to  succeed  by  some  saving 
element  introduced  into  the  politics  of  the  present 
day.  You  know  this:  your  Websters,  your  Clays, 
your  Calhouns,  your  Douglases,  however  intel 
lectually  able  they  may  have  been,  have  never 
dared  or  cared  to  touch  that  moral  element  of  our 
national  life.  Either  the  shallow  and  heartless 
trade  of  politics  had  eaten  out  their  own  moral 
being,  or  they  feared  to  enter  the  unknown  land 
of  lofty  right  and  wrong. 

Neither  of  these  great  names  has  linked  its  fame 
with  one  great  moral  question  of  the  day.  They 
deal  with  money  questions,  with  tariffs,  with  par 
ties,  with  State  law;  and  if,  by  chance,  they  touch 
the  slave  question,  it  is  only  like  Jewish  hucksters 
trading  in  the  relics  of  saints.  The  reformers  — 
the  fanatics,  as  we  are  called  —  are  the  only  ones 
who  have  launched  social  and  moral  questions.  I 
risk  nothing  when  I  say,  that  the  Anti-Slavery  dis 
cussion  of  the  last  twenty  years  has  been  the  salt 
of  this  nation:  it  has  actually  kept  it  alive  and 
wholesome.  Without  it  our  politics  would  have 
sunk  beyond  even  contempt.  So  with  this  ques 
tion.  It  stirs  the  deepest  sympathy;  it  appeals  to 
the  highest  moral  sense;  it  inwraps  within  itself 
the  greatest  moral  issues.  Judge  it,  then,  candidly, 


THE    FIRST    BATTLES  4*5 

carefully,  as  Americans;  and  let  us  show  ourselves 
worthy  of  the  high  place  to  which  God  has  called 
us  in  human  affairs. 

And  again,  on  another  occasion,  speaking  of 
the  ballot,  he  said: 

We  claim  it  therefore,  for  woman.  The  reply 
is  that  woman  has  not  sense  enough.  If  she  has 
not,  so  much  the  more  shame  for  your  public 
schools, —  educate  her!  If  God  did  not  give  her 
mind  enough,  then  you  are  brutes;  for  you  say  to 
her:  "  Madam,  you  have  sense  enough  to  earn 
your  own  living, —  don't  come  to  us !  "  You  make 
her  earn  her  own  bread,  and  if  she  has  sense  enough 
to  do  that,  she  has  sense  enough  to  say  whether 
Fernando  Wood  or  Governor  Morgan  shall  take 
one  cent  out  of  every  hundred  to  pay  for  fire 
works.  When  you  hold  her  up  in  both  hands  and 
say:  "Let  me  work  for  you!  Don't  move  one 
of  your  dainty  fingers !  We  will  pour  wealth  into 
your  lap,  and  be  ye  clothed  in  satin  and  velvet, 
all  ye  daughters  of  Eve !  " —  then  you  will  be  con 
sistent  in  saying  that  woman  has  not  sense  enough 
to  vote;  but  if  she  has  sense  enough  to  work,  to 
depend  for  her  bread  on  her  work,  she  has  sense 
enough  to  vote. 

Then,  again,  men  say,  "  She  is  so  different  from 
man  that  God  did  not  mean  that  she  should  vote/' 
Is  she  ?  Then  I  do  not  know  how  to  vote  for  her. 
One  of  two  things  is  true:  She  is  either  exactly 
like  man  —  exactly  like  him,  teetotally  like  him, 
— and  if  she  is,  then  a  ballot  box  based  upon  brains 
belongs  to  her  as  well  as  to  him;  or  she  is  differ 
ent,  and  then  I  do  not  know  how  to  vote  for  her. 
If  she  is  like  me,  so  much  like  me  that  I  know 
just  as  well  how  to  vote  for  her  as  she  knows  how 


46  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

to  vote  for  herself,  then  —  the  very  basis  of  the 
ballot  box  being  capacity  —  she,  being  the  same  as 
I,  has  the  same  right  to  vote.  And  if  she  is  so 
different  that  she  has  a  different  range  of  avoca 
tions  and  powers  and  capacities,  then  it  is  neces 
sary  she  should  go  into  the  legislature,  and  with 
her  own  voice  say  what  she  wants,  and  write  her 
wishes  into  statute  books,  because  nobody  is  able 
to  interpret  her.  Choose  which  horn  of  the  di 
lemma  you  please. 

More  than  half  a  century  has  elapsed  since 
Phillips  made  this  point,  and  in  all  the  discus 
sion  there  has  been  on  the  question  of  woman 
suffrage  nobody  has  been  able  to  refute  or 
evade  its  logic.  But  he  would  have  been 
amazed  if  at  that  time  any  one  had  assured 
him  that  half  a  century  would  pass  before  bis 
countrymen  awoke  to  an  act  of  justice  so  ob 
vious  and  necessary  as  equal  and  universal 
suffrage. 


Ill 

ON  THE  FIRING  LINES 

THE  first  great  fact  persistently  thrust 
upon  the  attention  of  every  investigator  of  the 
story  of  slavery  in  America  is  the  tremendous 
and  wide-spreading  power  that  always  pertains 
to  great  profits. 

Profits  seem  to  breed  their  own  power  and 
miraculously  to  emanate  it ;  and  from  small 
profits  to  great  the  degree  of  power  generated 
seems  to  increase  in  geometrical  ratio.  In  our 
own  day  we  have  seen  clearly  enough  and  often 
enough  how  apparently  irresistible  is  the  power 
put  forth  by  the  Controlling  Interests  that 
reap  most  of  the  huge  profits  of  the  existing 
system;  and  the  power  exerted  by  the  35  per 
cent,  profits  of  slavery  was  akin  to  this.  As  in 
our  own  day,  secret,  insidious  influences  started 
from  the  seat  of  profits  and  ran  out  of  sight 
across  the  country  until  they  echoed  in  some 
print  or  pulpit  for  the  benefit  of  the  profit- 
makers  and  the  injury  of  anybody  that  at- 
47 


48  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

tacked  them.  Exactly  what  the  Socialists  are 
to-day  in  the  columns  of  the  kept  press  the 
Abolitionists  were  sixty  years  ago.  The 
spirit  of  profits  has  changed  not  at  all  and 
the  tactics  have  changed  but  little.  Every 
man  that  offends  them  is  still  a  liar  and  a 
scoundrel;  still  every  exposition  of  their 
thievery  and  graft  is  extravagance,  falsehood 
and  vituperation;  and  still  all  the  forces  of 
education,  the  press,  literature  and  the  church 
are  employed  to  overwhelm  with  discredit 
whomsoever  shall  stand  and  clamor  for  justice. 
Exactly  so  it  was  with  the  Abolitionists,  and 
the  heaviest  burden  of  the  hatred  they  aroused 
fell  upon  Phillips.  To  read  now  what  was  said 
of  him,  even  in  the  Northern  press,  between 
1837  and  1861,  you  would  think,  if  unenlight 
ened,  that  you  were  reading  of  a  man  in 
capable  of  telling  the  truth  about  anything  and 
given  over  to  depraved  and  wanton  designs 
against  the  prosperity  of  his  country  and  the 
fame  of  its  best  and  purest  citizens.  It  is  a 
very  curious  fact  that  in  all  ages  the  means  of 
directing  public  opinion  and  of  writing  history 
are  almost  exclusively  in  the  hands  of  reaction 
ary  influences.  Phillips  was  at  the  mercy  of 
these.  Naturally  he  belonged  to  the  educated 
and  literary  circles.  North  and  South  they 


ON    THE    FIRING    LINES  49 

turned  upon  him  with  a  ferocity  of  hatred  only 
to  be  paralleled  in  the  case  of  the  leader  of  a 
labor  union  that  threatens  profits  with  a  strike 
or  of  a  literary  man  that  allies  himself  with 
the  cause  of  the  toilers. 

The  power  of  the  slave-holders'  profits  was 
as  absolute  in  all  branches  of  the  national  gov 
ernment  as  the  power  of  the  Controlling  Inter 
ests  has  ever  been  in  our  time,  and  then  as  now 
it  was  a  power  that  rotted  the  courts  and  made 
a  travesty  of  justice.  As  in  these  days  the 
Federal  bench  is  filled  from  the  ranks  of  the 
railroad  and  corporation  attorneys,  so  in  those 
days  no  man  could  hope  to  become  a  judge  un 
less  he  was  known  to  be  sound  in  his  subserviency 
to  the  slave-holding  Interests.  This  was  nec 
essary  because  court  cases  affecting  -ssues  of 
slavery  were  as  common  then  as  railroad  cases 
are  now. 

In  all  this  the  North,  controlled  by  its  busi 
ness  men  and  their  affiliations,  tamely  ac 
quiesced,  although  sometimes  it  was  a  condition 
that  reacted  severely  upon  individual  business 
men.  Of  this  I  must  cite  here  one  example 
for  the  sake  of  its  many-sided  illumination  of 
conditions  North  and  South  and  for  its  light 
upon  the  career  of  Wendell  Phillips. 

In  the  early  forties,  free-born  colored  men, 


50  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

natives  and  citizens  of  Massachusetts,  that 
were  sailors  on  Northern  ships,  were  exposed 
to  great  danger  in  Southern  ports.  Especially 
in  Charleston  they  were  liable  to  be  arrested 
on  fictitious  charges,  to  be  thrown  into  jail  and 
to  be  sold  into  slavery,  whence  they  could  sel 
dom  be  rescued.  In  the  farcial  courts  of  jus 
tice  presided  over  by  the  slave-owners'  puppets 
a  man  thus  seized  had  as  little  chance  as  a 
labor  union  has  in  a  State  court  now. 

For  this  aggression,  utterly  lawless  as  it 
was,  the  slave-holding  element  was  not  without 
its  pretense  of  an  excuse.  Slaves  were  contin 
ually  escaping  to  the  North  and  their  owners 
found  increasing  difficulty  in  recovering  them. 
Many  thousands  of  such  fugitives  had  made 
their  way  through  the  Northern  States  to 
Canada,  where  they  were  safe  under  the  pro 
tection  of  the  British  flag.  Abolitionists  like 
Garrison  and  Phillips  were  frankly  engaged  in 
aiding  these  escapes,  and,  as  the  center  of  the 
Abolitionist  movement  was  in  Massachusetts, 
the  slave-owning  interests  retaliated  by  kidnap 
ing  Massachusetts  colored  men  that  ventured 
into  Southern  ports  —  a  fact  aptly  pointing 
Garrison's  assertion  (subsequently  appropriated 
by  Lincoln)  that  the  nation  could  not  endure 
half  slave  and  half  free. 


ON    THE    FIRING    LINES  51 

So  long  as  the  slavery  issue  was  one  of  ab 
stract  right  and  wrong,  the  better  element  of 
Massachusetts,  the  business  men  and  the  com 
mercial  classes  generally,  sided  with  the  South. 
But  the  seizure  of  these  seamen  affected  them 
differently.  They  owned  ships.  Sometimes  a 
ship  that  left  Boston  full-handed  for  Charles 
ton  would  return  half-manned  because  its  Negro 
sailors  had  been  seized  and  imprisoned.  On  its 
voyage  it  must  pass  Cape  Hatteras,  a  danger 
ous  place  for  under-manned  shipping.  Prop 
erty  —  sacred  property  —  was  therefore  put 
in  peril  of  loss.  Consciences  that  cared  noth 
ing  about  the  wrongs  and  sufferings  of  three 
million  slaves  awoke  to  action  and  Massachu 
setts  loudly  protested. 

Mr.  Samuel  Hoar,  founder  of  a  famous  fam 
ily,  was  then  an  eminent  citizen  of  the  State. 
With  other  commissioners  he  was  sent  on  a 
peaceful  embassy  to  Charleston  to  see  if  the 
slave-holding  Interests  could  be  induced  to  give 
over  slave-catching  and  kidnaping  when  these 
practises  affected  Boston  pocket-books.  As 
soon  as  Mr.  Hoar's  presence  was  known  in 
Charleston  his  life  was  in  danger.  A  mob  gath 
ered  about  his  hotel,  and  if  the  Governor  of  the 
State  had  not  ordered  his  deportation  under  an 
armed  guard  he  would  have  been  lynched. 


52  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

Mr.  Phillips,  eagerly  watching  every  day's 
developments  for  texts,  seized  this  occasion  for 
one  of  his  most  famous  speeches.  He  pointed 
out  that  in  refusing  protection  to  Mr.  Hoar, 
South  Carolina  had  violated  the  express  pro 
visions  of  the  Constitution  and  that  for  the 
insult  put  upon  Massachusetts  no  redress  was 
obtainable  within  the  Union.  He  therefore 
demanded  that  since  citizens  of  Massachusetts 
were  deprived  of  their  constitutional  rights  in 
South  Carolina,  and  the  national  Government 
would  not  protect  them  therein,  Massachusetts 
should  protect  herself  and  decline  to  recognize  a 
Union  thus  already  nullified  by  one  of  the 
States. 

Officially,  Massachusetts  was  still  dominated 
by  the  influences  that  sympathized  with  slave- 
holding.  In  silence  it  swallowed  the  insults, 
but  upon  the  masses  of  its  people  the  effect 
was  otherwise.  State  pride  was  touched,  and 
from  the  time  that  Mr.  Hoar  so  narrowly  es 
caped  the  Charleston  mob,  a  growing  sentiment 
questioned  the  righteousness  of  a  slave-owning 
oligarchy  that  had  cast  aside  all  pretense  of 
civilized  restraint  and  openly  returned  to  the 
methods  of  the  jungle.  In  all  these  progres 
sions  it  seems  to  be  true  that  the  uttered  word 
of  truth  must  be  reinforced  by  some  object  les- 


ON    THE    FIRING    LINES  53 

son,  patent  to  all  men's  eyes ;  neither  is  wholly 
effective  alone.  Phillips's  speech,  in  spite  of 
the  usual  efforts  to  suppress  or  ignore  it, 
served  to  carry  home  the  significance  of  Mr. 
Hoar's  narrow  escape  from  the  savages  of 
Charleston,  and  from  that  date  Boston  as  a 
whole  was  never  again  utterly  indifferent  on  the 
slave  question. 

Yet  observe  how  strange  was  the  sequel  this 
story  was  to  have  in  other  days.  Phillips  had 
used  the  power  of  his  eloquence  in  behalf  of 
Samuel  Hoar's  cause.  Forty-two  years  after 
Mr.  Hoar's  escape,  Wendell  Phillips  died  in 
Boston.  Samuel  Hoar  was  still  alive.  So 
great  and  so  savage  was  the  hatred  Mr.  Phil 
lips  had  drawn  upon  himself  in  the  closing 
years  of  his  life  that  not  even  his  death  could 
soften  it.  Among  the  bitter  taunts  flung  upon 
his  grave  was  one  from  Samuel  Hoar.  He 
said  that  he  did  not  attend  Wendell  Phillips's 
funeral,  but  he  approved  of  it. 

After  the  decision  in  the  fugitive  slave  case, 
to  which  I  referred  in  the  first  chapter  of  this 
chronicle,  he  was  out  of  Society,  out  of  his  pro 
fession,  out  of  the  church,  out  of  all  old  ties 
and  associations ;  out,  to  a  great  extent,  of  the 
view  of  the  community  that  generally  abhorred 
him.  He  no  longer  looked  upon  himself  as  an 


54  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

American  nor  upon  the  Constitution  as  a  thing 
to  which  he  owed  allegiance.  He  was  become 
a  man  without  a  country.  In  later  years  he 
resumed  his  civic  duties,  but  to  his  death  his 
isolation  remained  and  grew.  Hatred  seems  to 
have  been  allotted  to  him  as  fame  to  other  men. 
Year  after  year  his  figure,  the  loneliest  in  his 
tory,  rose  upon  the  scene  like  that  rock  in  the 
Indian  Ocean  that  is  so  strange  and  solitary  a 
monument  in  a  wide  range  of  empty  sea. 

So  situated,  he  labored  incessantly  in  the 
causes  to  which  he  had  given  over  his  life.  He 
became  the  general  agent  of  the  Massachusetts 
Anti-Slavery  Society  and  largely  directed  its 
campaigns;  he  wrote  and  published  pamphlets, 
some  signed  and  some  anonymous,  attacking 
slavery  from  every  possible  angle  of  advan 
tage;  he  furnished  articles  to  the  small  but 
vigorous  Abolitionist  press ;  he  used  his  modest 
income  in  the  support  of  the  movement ;  he  made 
his  house  a  refuge  for  Abolitionists  and  fugi 
tive  slaves ;  and  wherever  and  whenever  he  could 
find  opportunity  he  raised  his  voice  in  those 
eloquent  protests  that  no  man  can  read  now 
with  unquickened  pulses.  Behind  his  most  in 
nocent  address,  as  a  masked  battery,  he  car 
ried  Emancipation.  Thus  he  had  a  lecture 
with  the  attractive  title  "  Street  Life  in 


ON    THE    FIRING    LINES  QQ 

Europe,"  made  from  his  observations  abroad. 
But  when  a  rural  lyceum  or  lecture  course  was 
induced  to  accept  it,  men  heard  behind  the 
street  scenes  of  Europe  the  strenuous  insist 
ence  against  slavery  in  America.  In  at  least 
one  famous  instance  he  managed  in  this  way  to 
break  through  the  crust  of  Northern  culture 
and  indifference  and  to  drag  before  the  con 
science  of  a  reluctant  Northern  community  the 
great  moral  issue  of  the  day.  The  place  was 
probably  the  last  on  earth  to  suggest  itself  to 
you.  It  was  Concord,  Massachusetts,  sacred 
in  American  literature  and  famous  for  one  of 
the  most  heroic  deeds  of  the  American  revolu 
tion. 

In  our  day  we  sometimes  wonder  that  influ 
ences  in  the  community  apparently  isolated 
from  the  Interests,  should  nevertheless  be 
ardent  in  their  defense.  Even  this  mystery 
had  its  counterpart  in  the  day  of  the  Abolition 
struggle,  for  in  many  a  remote  New  England 
village,  where  no  commercial  concern  could  be 
pleaded,  the  spirit  was  hot  for  the  South  and 
slavery,  and  men  were  not  safe  if  they  talked 
for  Abolition.  Venerable  ministers  of  the  Gos 
pel  maintained  from  the  pulpit  the  righteous 
ness  of  the  slave  market  and  its  divine 
sanction.  In  behalf  of  the  principle  of 


56          THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

slavery,  men  otherwise  of  peaceful  walk  were 
ready  at  all  times  to  fight  and  to  shed  blood, 
although  no  interest  of  theirs,  near  nor  remote, 
was  menaced,  but  only  of  the  348,214  persons 
in  the  South,  that  for  an  annual  profit  of  35 
per  cent,  held  slaves. 

It  was  against  a  flood  of  hysteria  like  this 
that  Phillips  made  incessant  war,  going  for 
inspiration  again  ancl  again  to  the  spirit  of  the 
French  and  American  revolutions.  His  utter 
most  conviction  was  that  there  could  be  no  such 
thing  as  a  republic  where  equal  rights  were 
denied  to  any  part  of  the  population,  and,  in 
his  own  powerful  phrase,  a  government  that 
tolerated  human  slavery  was  only  a  pirate  ship. 
While  he  thundered  against  the  evil  as  a  whole, 
he  lost  no  chance  to  attack  its  ramifications 
and  by-products,  and  through  one  of  these 
ramifications  he  now  struck  effectively  at  that 
snobbery  in  so-called  social  circles  that  had 
closed  their  doors  to  him. 

It  was  then  the  custom  throughout  the  North 
for  persons  of  social  eminence  or  social  ambi 
tions  to  prove  their  superiority  and  right  to  a 
seat  among  the  elect  by  showing  bitterness 
against  the  colored  race,  just  as  to-day  per 
sons  of  similar  mentality  and  similar  ambitions 
make  a  point  of  sneering  at  labor  unions  and 


ON    THE    FIRING    LINES  57 

scorning  "  the  lower  orders."  This  was  in  all 
communities  an  easy  badge  of  gentility.  In 
Boston,  the  highest  circles  of  society  had  se 
cured  a  condition  under  which  colored  children 
were  not  allowed  to  go  to  the  public  schools 
used  by  the  white  children,  but  were  herded  by 
themselves  in  inferior  buildings  where  they  re 
ceived  inferior  tuition.  Mr.  Phillips,  most  con 
scientious  of  democrats,  despised  the  distinction 
of  color  made  by  the  School  Committee,  de 
spised  its  origin,  which  he  knew  well  enough  to 
be  a  smug  and  greasy  snobbery,  and  declared 
war  upon  it.  First  he  presented  a  petition 
that  colored  children  be  admitted  to  the  white 
schools.  Some  element  of  chance  seemed  al 
ways  to  fight  on  his  side ;  he  could  hardly  have 
foreseen  what  was  to  happen  to  his  advantage 
in  this  case.  The  Committee,  in  denying  the 
petition,  made  the  blunder  of  offering  its  so- 
called  reasons,  backed  by  the  opinion  of  dis 
tinguished  but  foolish  counsel.  Nothing  could 
better  have  suited  Mr.  Phillips's  purposes. 
He  tore  into  the  "  reasons,"  shattering  them 
with  his  terrible  sarcasm,  and  then,  using  his 
great  legal  knowledge  and  powers  of  argument, 
he  made  of  the  city  solicitor's  opinion  a  thing 
of  shreds  and  patches.  Here,  too,  shone  forth 
another  of  his  dominant  traits,  for  no  man  was 


58  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

ever  more  relentless  in  his  cause  or  less  knowing 
of  discouragement.  In  his  steady,  pertinacious, 
unflinching  way,  he  brought  up  the  same  issue 
next  year  and  the  next,  always  defeated  and 
always  making  headway.  At  last  he  got  his 
case  before  the  Legislature,  and  in  1854*  he 
forced  it  through  to  victory.  The  law  of  the 
State  was  changed  to  make  impossible  the  dis 
crimination  he  opposed  and  he  had  the  satis 
faction  of  seeing  colored  children  admitted  to 
the  schools  on  equal  footing  with  the  white. 

Fourteen  years  passed  from  the  beginning  of 
that  struggle  until  his  steady  fighting  won  suc 
cess. 

Meantime,  living  his  own  life  in  his  own  way 
at  his  Essex  Street  home,  and  engaged  daily  in 
the  anti-slavery  struggle  as  the  business  of  his 
'  Soul,  he  had  many  other  activities  similarly  in 
spired.  To  him  any  injustice  anywhere  de 
manded  from  a  just  man  all  possible  protest. 
He  looked  upon  the  human  race  as  no  more  than 
beginning  to  emerge  from  bondage ;  the  typical, 
complacent  American  view  was  that  here,  at 
least,  it  had  topped  the  summit  of  its  journey. 
This  difference  and  one  other  make  him  stand 
out  so  sharply  against  his  times ;  the  other  be 
ing  that  with  all  the  heart  of  him  he  abhorred 


ON    THE    FIRING    LINES  59 

compromise,  and  compromise  was  the  choicest 
idol  of  his  day. 

"  Who  can  not  hate  can  love  not " 

sings  Swinburne.  Phillips  had  an  extraordi 
nary  Capacity  for  hating  all  things  evil,  but 
first  of  all  he  hated  the  idea  of  striking  a  bar 
gain  with  conscience.  Right  was  right  to  be 
followed  purely  for  its  own  sake  and  for  no 
other  reward.  Wrong  was  wrong  and  not  to 
be  trafficked  with.  In  the  midst  of  the  furious 
conflict  with  slavery  that  he  tried  to  provoke 
and  to  aggravate  he  found  time  to  deliver  pow 
erful  arguments  in  favor  of  other  causes  he 
held  to  be  right  and  just:  in  favor  of  woman's 
suffrage,  against  capital  punishment,  for  the 
removal  of  an  unjust  judge,  in  behalf  of  Ire 
land,  against  the  sodden  public  conscience  that 
views  with  indifference  the  lost  souls  of  the 
street.  Amid  all  these  efforts  and  still  giving 
his  unflagging  assistance  to  Garrison  in  the  de 
tails  of  the  anti-slavery  campaign  he  found  time 
to  prepare  and  deliver  scholarly  orations  like 
that  on  "  The  Lost  Arts  " ;  biographical  trib 
utes,  like  those  on  "  Daniel  O'Connell w  and 
"  Toussaint  L'Ouverture,"  and  stimulating  ad 
dresses  on  Christianity  and  morals.  His  mind 


60  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

seemed  a  prodigious  engine  that  rested  not 
but  at  all  times  labored  full  steam  ahead. 

His  private  walk  was  no  less  extraordinary. 
Mrs.  Phillips,  to  whom  he  w/as  wholly  devoted, 
was  a  chronic  invalid  and  for  forty-six  years 
he  was  her  nurse,  attendant  and  always  cheer 
ful  companion.  He  did  much  of  his  work  at 
night  while  she  slept  in  an  adjoining  room. 
She  had  a  bell  at  her  hand  with  which  she  was 
wont  to  summon  him.  One  night  he  made 
count  of  her  calls  and  they  totalled  twenty-six. 
Yet  it  is  the  unvarying  testimony  on  all  sides 
that  he  never  once  departed  from  the  one  atti 
tude  of  kindly  devotion ;  he  was  invariably  the 
gallant  and  attentive  lover.  In  a  season  when 
she  seemed  to  be  more  than  usually  ill  he  did 
not  leave  the  house  for  sixty  days,  spending 
all  his  waking  hours  about  her  bed  side. 
Surely  an  exceptional  man! 

The  charm  of  his  wonderful  oratory  and  the 
magnetism  of  his  presence  sometimes  won  him 
a  hearing  from  assemblies  that  detested  his 
opinions.  Thus  "  The  Lost  Arts  "  spread  his 
fame  and  enlarged  his  audiences.  It  is  re 
corded  of  many  communities  that  with  trepida 
tion  and  misgiving  they  engaged  him  to  deliver 
this  lecture,  expecting  to  see  some  raging  per 
son,  full  of  sound  and  fury  and  bellowing  like 


ON    THE    FIRING    LINES  61 

a  bull ;  for  newspapers  had  created  and  per 
sistently  spread  the  belief  that  he  was  a  fire- 
eater,  a  dangerous  maniac  and  an  unqualified 
liar.  When  he  stepped  upon  the  stage,  so 
evidently  a  man  of  learning  and  refinement,  and 
with  his  bell-like  voice  began  so  quietly  to  ad 
dress  them  in  polished  phrases,  speaking  in 
dubitable  truth,  they  were  stricken  with  a 
comical  amazement. 

The  very  style  of  his  oratory  was  a  startling 
innovation.  At  that  time  and  for  long  after 
ward,  the  common  conception  of  an  orator  was 
of  a  man  violently  swinging  his  arms  and  sing 
songing  rhetorical  and  flowery  phrases  in  a 
way  that  burlesqued  nature.  Mr.  Phillips 
used  very  few  gestures  and  these  most  modest ; 
he  never  shouted;  he  never  seemed  to  be  ex 
cited;  he  never  sing-songed;  he  spoke  to  five 
thousand  exactly  as  he  would  speak  to  one. 
His  compelling  power  lay  in  the  force  of  his 
ideas,  in  his  simple,  direct  language,  in  the 
compact  and  mighty  phrases  into  which  he 
wrought  his  words.  He  revolutionized  oratory 
in  America.  Since  his  time  it  has  never  been 
easy  for  Bombast  to  carry  off  the  fustian  noise 
that  alone  had  been  popular  among  us.  Some 
thing  most  extraordinary,  and  to  this  day  un- 
equaled,  lay  in  the  mere  arrangement  of  his 


62          THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

sentences.  They  could  not  have  been  studied, 
for  he  never  wrote  out  anything  he  was  to  say, 
and  in  his  most  extempore  addresses  the  same 
quality  appears.  I  mean  he  could  always  so 
marshal  his  words,  nervous,  swift,  vital,  sting 
ing  as  they  were,  that  they  had  a  subtle 
rhythm  and  melodic  import  aside  from  their 
burning  verbal  significance.  He  was,  I  sup 
pose,  the  clearest-minded  man  that  ever  con 
fronted  an  audience  and  swayed  it  to  his  will. 
Analyzing  his  speeches  now,  it  appears  that  his 
mind  worked  simultaneously  in  two  divisions. 
One  was  supervising  and  directing  the  immedi 
ate  utterance;  the  other  was  arranging  his 
argument  far  ahead.  Greater  intellectual  feats 
than  these  are  not  recorded  of  any  other  orator. 
Webster,  Chatham,  Burke,  Fox,  Sheridan, 
Clay,  prepared  with  great  care  the  periods 
with  which  they  charmed  their  hearers.  This 
man  at  a  moment's  notice  would  speak  with  all 
the  perfection  of  form  and  beauty  of  married 
thought  and  word  attainable  by  any  prepara 
tion. 

A  Virginia  slave  named  Thomas  Sims  es 
caped  to  Boston  and  was  captured  there.  In 
spite  of  the  most  strenuous  efforts  of  Garrison, 
Phillips,  Edmund  Quincy  and  other  good  men, 
a  Massachusetts  judge  returned  him  to  slavery. 


ON    THE    FIRING    LINES  63 

This  event  brought  forth  two  of  Phillips's 
most  celebrated  orations ;  one  when  the  judge's 
decision  was  made  known,  one  upon  its  first 
anniversary  —  a  daring  thought  to  celebrate 
such  an  event!  English  literature  has  no 
passages  more  tremendous  than  those  in  which 
Wendell  Phillips  poured  forth  on  these  two  oc 
casions  the  liquid  fire  of  his  indignation,  and 
in  "  The  Sims  Anniversary,"  particularly,  that 
noble  paragraph  beginning  "  Take  the  broken 
hearts,  the  bereaved  mothers,"  seems  to  me  to 
represent  the  highest  flight  reached  by  this  or 
any  other  orator  of  our  race. 

Here  are  some  extracts  from  this  great 
speech.  They  will  indicate  the  unflinching 
courage  of  the  man  as  well  as  the  eloquence  of 
the  orator: 

Thomas  Sims  is  the  first  man  that  the  city  of 
Boston"" has Topenty  bound  and  fettered  and  sent 
back  to  bondage.  I  have  no  heart  to  dwell  on 
so  horrible  an  outrage:  that  sad  procession  in  the 
dim  morning  through  our  streets  —  the  poor  youth 
—  his  noble  effort  to  break  his  chains  —  mocked 
with  one  short  hour  of  freedom  and  then  thrust 
back  to  the  hell  he  had  escaped,  by  brother  men, 
in  the  prostituted  names  of  justice  and  religion. 
We  sit  down  with  the  single  captive  and  weep 
with  him  as  the  iron  enters  into  his  soul  —  too 
sad  for  the  moment  to  think  of  the  disgrace  of 
our  city  or  even  the  wickedness  of  its  rulers.  Pity 


64?  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

swallows  up  indignation.  We  might  be  forgiven 
if  for  the  moment  we  mistook  our  sadness  for 
despair,  and  even  fancied  the  event  disastrous  to 
others  than  the  victim.  But  not  so.  Liberty 
knows  nothing  but  victories.  In  a  cause  like  ours 
to  which  every  attribute  of  the  most  high  is  pledged, 
everything  helps  us.  ... 

I  go  further.  I  do  not  believe  that  if  we  should 
live  to  the  longest  period  Providence  ever  allots 
to  the  life  of  a  human  being  we  shall  see  the  total 
abolition  of  slavery,  unless  it  comes  in  some  critical 
conjunction  of  national  affairs,  when  the  slave,  tak 
ing  advantage  of  a  crisis  in  the  fate  of  his  mas 
ter,  shall  dictate  his  own  terms.  How  did  French 
slavery  go  down  ?  How  did  the  French  slave  trade 
go  down?  When  Napoleon  came  back  from  Elba, 
when  his  fate  hung  trembling  in  the  balance,  and 
he  wished  to  gather  around  him  the  sympathies  of 
the  liberals  of  Europe,  he  no  sooner  set  foot  in 
the  Tuileries  than  he  signed  the  edict  abolishing 
the  slave  trade,  against  which  the  Abolitionists  of 
England  and  France  had  protested  for  twenty 
years  in  vain.  And  the  trade  went  down,  because 
Napoleon  felt  that  he  must  do  something  to  gild 
the  darkening  hour  of  his  second  attempt  to  clutch 
the  sceptre  of  France.  How  did  the  slave  sys 
tem  go  down?  When,  in  1848,  the  Provisional 
Government  found  itself  in  the  Hotel  de  Ville, 
obliged  to  do  something  to  draw  to  itself  the 
sympathy  and  liberal  feeling  of  the  French  nation, 
they  signed  an  edict  —  it  was  the  first  from  the 
nascent  Republic  —  abolishing  the  death  penalty 
and  slavery.  The  storm  which  rocked  the  vessel 
of  state  almost  to  foundering  snapped  forever  the 
chain  of  the  French  slave.  Look,  too,  at  the  his- 


ON    THE    FIRING    LINES  65 

tory  of  Mexican  and  South  American  emancipa 
tion;  you  will  find  that  it  was,  in  every  instance, 
I  think,  the  child  of  convulsion. 

The  hour  will  come  —  God  hasten  ij; !  —  when 
the  American  people  shall  so  stand  on  the  deck 
of  their  Union,  "  built  i'  the  eclipse  and  rigged 
with  curses  dark."  If  I  live  to  see  that  hour 
I  shall  say  to  every  slave,  "  Strike  now  for  Free 
dom!  The  balance  hangs  trembling;  it  is  un 
certain  which  scale  shall  kick  the  beam.  Strain 
every  nerve,  wrestle  with  every  power  God  and 
nature  have  put  into  your  hands,  for  your  place 
among  the  races  of  this  Western  world  " ;  and  that 
hour  would  free  the  slave. 

The  Abolitionist  who  shall  stand  in  such  an  hour 
as  that  and  keep  silence,  will  be  recreant  to  the 
cause  of  three  million  of  his  fellow  men  in  bonds. 
I  believe  that,  probably,  is  the  only  way  in  which 
we  shall  ever,  any  of  us,  see  the  downfall  of  Ameri 
can  slavery.  I  do  not  shrink  from  the  toast  with 
which  Dr.  Johnson  flavored  his  Oxford  port  — 
"  Success  to  the  first  insurrection  of  the  blacks  in 
Jamaica !  "  I  do  not  shrink  from  the  sentiment 
of  Southey,  in  a  letter  to  Duppa  — "  There  are 
scenes  of  tremendous  horror  which  I  could  smile 
at  by  Mercy's  side.  An  insurrection  which  should 
make  the  Negroes  masters  of  the  West  Indies  is 
one."  I  believe  both  these  sentiments  are  dictated 
by  the  highest  humanity.  I  know  what  anarchy 
is.  I  know  what  civil  war  is.  I  can  imagine  the 
scenes  of  blood  through  which  a  rebellious  slave 
population  must  march  to  their  rights.  They  are 
dreadful.  And  yet  I  do  not  know  that,  to  an  en 
lightened  man,  a  scene  of  civil  war  is  any  more 
sickening  than  the  thought  of  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  of  slavery. 


66  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

Take  the  broken  hearts,  the  bereaved  mothers, 
the  infant  wrung  from  the  hands  of  its  parents, 
the  husband  and  wife  torn  asunder,  every  right 
trodden  under  foot,  the  blighted  hopes,  the  im- 
bruted  souls,  the  darkened  and  degraded  millions, 
sunk  below  the  level  of  intellectual  life,  melted  in 
sensuality,  herded  with  beasts,  who  have  walked 
over  the  burning  marl  of  Southern  slavery  to  their 
graves,  and  where  is  the  battle-field,  however 
ghastly,  that  is  not  white, —  white  as  an  angel's 
wing  —  compared  with  the  blackness  of  that  dark 
ness  which  has  brooded  over  the  Carolinas  for  two 
hundred  years?  Do  you  love  mercy?  Weigh  out 
the  fifty  thousand  hearts  that  have  beaten  their 
last  pulses  amid  agonies  of  thought  and  suffering 
fancy  faints  to  think  of,  and  the  fifty  thousand 
mothers,  who,  with  sickening  senses,  watch  for  the 
footsteps  that  are  not  wont  to  tarry  long  in  their 
coming,  and  soon  find  themselves  left  to  tread  the 
pathway  of  life  alone  —  add  all  the  horrors  of 
cities  sacked  and  lands  laid  waste  —  that  is  war. 
Weigh  it  now  against  some  young,  trembling  girl 
sent  to  the  auction  block,  some  man  like  that  taken 
from  our  courthouse  and  carried  back  into  Georgia; 
multiply  that  individual  agony  into  three  millions ; 
multiply  that  into  centuries,  and  that  into  all  the 
relations  of  father  and  child,  husband  and  wife; 
heap  on  all  the  deep  moral  degradation  both  of 
oppressor  and  the  oppressed  —  and  tell  me  if  Wa 
terloo  or  Thermopylae  can  claim  one  tear  from  the 
eyes  even  of  the  tenderest  spirit  of  mercy  com 
pared  with  this  daily  system  of  hell  amid  the  most 
civilized  Christian  people  on  the  face  of  the  earth ! 

No,  I  confess,  I  am  not  a  non-resistant.  The 
reason  why  I  advise  the  slave  to  be  governed  by  a 
policy  of  peace  is  because  he  has  no  chance.  If 


ON    THE    FIEING    LINES  67 

he  had  one  —  if  he  had  as  good  a  chance  as  those 
who  went  up  to  Lexington  seventy-seven  years 
ago  —  I  should  call  him  the  basest  recreant  that 
ever  deserted  wife  and  child  if  he  did  not  vindi 
cate  his  liberty  by  his  own  right  hand. 

Later  in  the  same  remarkable  speech  he  re 
curred  to  this  topic  and  expressed  clearly  his 
fundamental  faith  that  there  arc  conceivable 
conditions  under  which  there  is  nothing  left 
but  violence. 

You  will  say  this  is  bloody  doctrine  —  anarch 
ical  doctrine;  it  will  prejudice  people  against  the 
cause.  I  know  it  will.  Heaven  pardon  those  who 
make  it  necessary!  Heaven  pardon  the  judges, 
the  merchants  and  the  clergy  who  make  it  neces 
sary  for  hunted  men  to  turn  when  they  are  at 
bay.,  and  fly  at  the  necks  of  their  pursuers!  It 
is  not  our  fault!  I  shrink  from  no  question,  how 
ever  desperate,  that  has  in  it  the  kernel  of  pos 
sible  safety  for  a  human  being,  hunted  by  twenty 
millions  of  slave-catchers  in  this  Christian  repub 
lic  of  ours.  I  am  willing  to  confess  my  faith. 
It  is  this,  that  the  Christianity  of  this  country  is 
worth  nothing,  except  it  is  or  can  be  made  capable 
of  dealing  with  the  question  of  slavery.  I  am 
willing  to  confess  another  article  of  my  faith:  that 
the  constitution  and  government  of  this  country 
is  worth  nothing,  except  it  is  or  can  be  made 
capable  of  grappling  with  the  great  question  of 
slavery. 


IV 


THE  INTERESTS  THEN  AND  THE  IN 
TERESTS  NOW 

THE  great  strength  of  the  real  Abolition 
ists,  of  Phillips,  Garrison  and  their  followers, 
lay  in  the  fact  that  they  would  never  compro 
mise. 

This  was  all  the  more  remarkable  in  a  coun 
try  where  compromise  is  as  natural  and  easy 
as  dining.  It  may,  in  fact,  be  described  as 
the  national  American  vice ;  we  all  practice  it. 
Except  independence  in  1776  and  chattel 
slavery  after  1863  we  can  hardly  name  a  na 
tional  issue  that  has  been  fought  through  to 
the  end  relentlessly.  The  good  nature  that  is 
so  charming  at  home  and  in  some  other  places, 
and  a  bore  when  it  induces  us  to  submit  with 
such  unapproachable  patience  to  strap-hang 
ing  in  street  cars  and  to  extortion  by  railroads, 
is  a  nuisance  when  it  gets  into  public  affairs. 
A  thing  is  either  right  or  wrong.  When  it  is 

an   issue   to   be   decided   by   public   action   the 
68 


THE  INTERESTS  THEN  AND  NOW      69 

favorite  good  naturcd  American  way  is  to  try 
to  make  it  both;  which  is  not  only  impossible 
but  imbecile. 

It  was  so  about  chattel  slavery  previous  to 
1863  and  it  is  so  to-day  about  wage  slavery. 

As  Garrison  and  Phillips  and  the  rest  stead 
ily  drove  the  national  conscience  before  them 
on  the  slavery  issue  there  arose  a  vast  body  of 
men  that  knew  in  their  hearts  and  souls  that 
slavery  was  wrong,  but  were  too  cowardly  or 
too  good  natured  to  say  so.  These  incessantly 
proposed  compromises  of  different  kinds  with 
a  doddering  idea  of  staving  off  the  inevitable 
conflict.  They  left  behind  an  innumerable 
progeny  industriously  engaged  to-day  in  the 
same  endeavor.  In  the  old  days  they  said  that 
of  course  things  were  not  exactly  as  they  ought 
to  be  but  we  must  not  talk  about  Abolition ; 
the  thing  to  do  was  to  restrict  slavery.  Keep 
it  out  of  the  new  territories  but  leave  it  alone 
in  the  South.  How  this  would  help  the  men 
and  women  then  held  in  a  terrible  and  degrad 
ing  bondage,  no  one  could  say,  but  such  was 
the  platform  of  millions  of  men  that  must  have 
known  better.  To-day  their  intellectual  de 
scendants,  knowing  equally  well  that  basic  con 
ditions  are  wrong,  dally  similarly  with  feeble, 
footless  proposals  of  reform.  "  Tell  us  not  of 


70  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

abolishing  wage  slavery,"  say  these  of  little 
faith  and  less  courage ;  "  rather  let  us  strive 
to  better  the  condition  of  the  slaves."  So  we 
have  the  social  settlement,  the  playground  as 
sociation,  the  anti-child  labor  league,  the  tene 
ment  reform  societies,  and  other  gropings  for 
betterment,  while  the  system  that  manufactures 
every  evil  condition  continues  to  work  overtime 
and  burden  society  with  its  poisonous  prod 
ucts. 

The  laws  passed  by  the  Southern  states  mak 
ing  it  a  crime  to  teach  a  slave  to  read,  with  a 
few  other  civilized  devices  of  that  kind,  includ 
ing  the  ready  shot  gun,  discouraged  in  Phil- 
lips's  day  some  of  the  manifestation  of  this 
snivelling  spirit  of  the  uplift.  The  rest 
showed  itself  in  a  scheme  to  buy  the  slaves  one 
at  a  time  and  deport  them  to  Africa  (a  bril 
liant  suggestion  that  was  the  foundation  of  the 
present  republic  of  Liberia),  and  in  some  feeble 
protests  against  allowing  slavery  to  engulf 
every  corner  of  the  land  as  well  as  to  adminis 
ter  every  part  of  the  government.  So  exact 
is  the  parallel  with  present  day  conditions  that 
someone  should  develop  it  to  the  end,  merely 
as  a  historical  study,  if  for  no  other  reason. 
The  perfect  counterpart  of  the  Progressive 
party  of  these  days  was  the  Free  Soil  party 


THE    INTERESTS    THEN    AND    NOW  71 

of  those,  which  figured  in  three  successive  presi 
dential  elections  and  once  cast  a  very  significant 
vote.  That  anyone  should  think  it  worth  while 
to  have  free  soil  until  we  had  free  men  seems 
now  strange  enough,  but  it  was  an  idea  ex 
tremely  popular  among  certain  orders  of  dough 
faces  in  1852.  The  avowed  principles  of  the 
Free  Soil  party  were  not  to  abolish  chattel 
slavery  any  more  than  the  avowed  principles 
of  the  Progressive  party  are  to  abolish  wage 
slavery  to-day;  but  merely  to  regulate  the  evil, 
a  fact  from  which  we  can  estimate  the  antiquity 
of  the  regulative  school  of  political  quackery. 

With  the  Free  Soil  fake  neither  Phillips  nor 
Garrison  would  have  aught  to  do  —  which  was 
well ;  otherwise  slavery  might  have  lasted  much 
longer.  The  point  with  these  two  extremists 
and  their  followers  was  that  on  a  matter  of 
conscience  there  can  be  no  compromise;  it  is 
either  fight  or  surrender.  They  believed  that 
slavery  was  a  wrong  for  which  all  the  words 
in  all  the  tongues  spoken  by  man  could  find 
no  adequate  expression.  They  were  perfectly 
willing  to  die  fighting  it,  but  they  would  not 
for  one  instant  admit  that  it  was  a  thing  to  be 
"  regulated." 

To  all  the  members  of  the  Free  Soil  party, 
therefore,  Phillips  became  an  object  of  dislike 


THE    STOEY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

almost  as  much  as  he  was  to  the  truckling 
Whigs  whom  he  so  mercilessly  lashed  with  his 
savage  sarcasms.  To  them  he  was  a  wild  and 
half-mad  enthusiast,  an  eccentric,  irrational 
fanatic,  and  above  all,  a  detestable  dealer  in 
extravagances.  That  is  the  word  in  all  ages 
beloved  of  the  dough-face.  Whatever  he  lacks 
the  courage  to  do  or  say  is  "  extravagance." 
Cowering  far  out  of  danger  of  even  stray  shots, 
he  points  to  the  man  on  the  firing  line  and  de 
nounces  him  as  extravagant.  Why  can't  he 
keep  cool  as  we  do,  here  back  of  the  sutlers' 
wagons  and  out  of  range?  Slavery  isn't  half 
as  bad  as  he  paints  it.  I  know  many  of  the 
slave-holders  and  they  are  mighty  nice  fellows. 
He  so  exaggerates  everything!  And  then  he 
always  appeals  to  the  mob  and  the  spirit  of 
social  unrest ;  he  has  none  of  the  spirit  of  im 
partial  inquiry ;  there  is  nothing  nice  and  re 
fined  about  his  methods  and  nothing  scholarly. 
Having  transacted  all  of  which  they  would  be 
take  themselves  to  the  passing  of  innocuous  reso 
lutions  and  the  choosing  of  candidates  for  the 
best  offices. 

But  Phillips  knew  well  enough  that  the  great 
est  and  only  eventual  force  in  the  world  is  the 
power  of  a  moral  idea  and  that  it  was  lost  the 
instant  it  fell  to  lasciviating  with  a  compro- 


THE  INTERESTS  THEN  AND  NOW      73 

mise.  He  knew  that,  however  men  might  be 
swerved  and  seemingly  obsessed  by  the  madness 
of  much  profits,  at  bottom  the  masses  were 
moral  and  the  way  to  abolish  any  evil  was  to 
appeal  to  their  consciences  about  it.  They 
would  not  respond  to  the  first  appeal  nor  to  the 
tenth,  perhaps,  but  in  the  end  the  response  was 
inevitable  if  only  those  that  were  banded 
against  the  evil  were  steadfast  and  implacable, 
caring  nothing  about  weapons  but  fighting  al 
ways. 

This  is  another  respect  in  which  he  was  the 
greatest  figure  of  his  times,  that  he  saw  all  this 
so  plainly  while  what  were  called  the  best  minds 
never  seemed  to  suspect  a  truth  so  great  and 
vital.  While  they  fooled  and  fiddled  about, 
wasting  time  in  deeds  analogous  to  the  trust 
busting  and  regulative  fol-de-rol  of  our  own 
times,  he  kept  incessantly  repeating  his  simple 
talisman,  "  This  thing  is  wrong,  it  is  absolutely 
wrong,  it  is  utterly  wrong !  "  and  lo,  at  last  the 
walls  fell  and  the  evil  vanished. 

But  he  did  this  at  a  cost  to  himself,  and  he 
knew  it,  and  knew  it  would  be  so  from  the  be 
ginning,  and  no  man  ever  heard  him  complain 
about  it.  Therefore,  I  hail  him  as  the  great 
est  American,  because  he  put  service  above  all 
other  considerations  and  then  stood  unshakable 


74*  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

in  that  creed.  If  you  are  as  sick  as  I  am  of 
having  the  galumphing  military  heroes  and  the 
faking  augurs  of  statecraft  crammed  down 
your  throat,  come  and  consider  for  a  time  a  reaJ 
man  and  have  refreshing  for  your  soul. 

Next  to  the  national  appetite  for  compro 
mise,  the  deadest  weights  on  social  progress  in 
America  are  the  timidity  of  its  champions  and 
their  failure  to  grasp  the  simple  little  fact  that 
what  they  are  enlisted  in  is  not  an  afternoon  tea 
party  but  a  war.  In  war  you  must  take  blows 
as  well  as  give  them.  But  we  seem  to  think 
that  we  can  deal  with  a  situation  as  terrific  as 
now  confronts  modern  society  and  still  keep  on 
good  terms  with  the  bandit  beneficiaries  of  that 
system  we  are  trying  to  dispossess. 

For  instance,  wre  have  always  had  an  almost 
superstitious  terror  for  the  printed  word  if  it 
appears  in  a  newspaper,  and  we  have  never  been 
able  to  understand  that  a  large  part  of  our 
press  is  controlled  absolutely  by  the  powrers  of 
evil  that  keep  it ;  consequently  its  hostility  to 
men  or  measures  is  without  real  significance. 
To  be  abused  by  the  newspapers  that  in  former 
days  were  kept  by  the  slave  owning  power  was 
a  badge  of  honor  equalled  only  by  abuse  from 
the  newspapers  that  in  our  own  time  are  kept 
by  the  gatherers  of  huge  profits  and  the  culti- 


THE    INTERESTS    THEN    AND    NOW  75 

vators  of  the  financial  melon  patch.  Nothing 
that  such  journals  can  say  of  an  honest  man 
can  harm  him,  unless  by  some  misfortune  they 
should  say  good  of  him.  In  that  case  he  should 
utilize  the  comment  for  the  narrow  observation 
of  his  walk  and  ways,  for  assuredly  he  has  been 
doing  something  he  should  not  do. 

All  this  is  perfectly  obvious  to  anybody  that 
will  take  the  time  to  consider  carefully  concern 
ing  newspapers  and  the  sources  of  their  opin 
ions  ;  but  the  average  man  still  continues  to 
allow  himself  to  be  affected  by  press  attacks 
and  the  average  leader  to  fear  adverse  com 
ment. 

Mr.  Phillips  had  none  of  these  delusions.  He 
had  learned  the  first  great  lesson  every  re 
former  must  learn  if  he  is  to  be  of  the  slightest 
effect  with  his  reforms.  He  had  learned  to  dis 
regard  criticism.  He  knew  well  enough  that 
the  beneficiaries  of  the  system  of  35  per  cent, 
profits  on  slave  labor  would  not  yield  without 
a  struggle  the  fatness  of  their  pleasant  arrange 
ments,  and  he  knew  that  their  power  would  be 
sufficient  to  array  against  their  assailants  a 
wide  variety  of  influences.  He  knew  too  that 
one  of  the  favorite  weapons  of  reaction  is  to 
attack  the  methods  of  those  that  strive  for  pro 
gress.  He  understood  all  this  and  estimated  it 


76  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

at  its  true  value.  One  of  the  things  for  which 
we  owe  him  undying  gratitude  is  that  he  never 
hesitated  for  a  moment  to  speak  the  plain,  un 
varnished  truth  about  any  situation  and  never 
cared  what  lies  were  set  afloat  about  him  the 
next  day  by  the  kept  press  of  that  period.  His 
views  on  this  subject  were  so  clear  that  I  think 
they  ought  to  be  remembered  by  every  person 
interested  in  securing  better  conditions.  In  his 
great  lecture  on  Daniel  O'Connell,  one  of  his 
most  eloquent  utterances,  he  said  this: 

O'Connell  has  been  charged  with  coarse,  violent, 
and  intemperate  language.  The  criticism  is  of 
little  importance.  Stupor  and  palsy  never  under 
stand  life.  White-livered  indifference  is  always 
disgusted  and  annoyed  by  earnest  conviction. 
Protestants  criticised  Luther  in  the  same  way.  It 
took  three  centuries  to  carry  us  far  off  enough  to 
appreciate  his  colossal  proportions.  It  is  a  hun 
dred  years  to-day  since  O'Connell  was  born.  It 
will  take  another  hundred  to  put  us  at  such  an 
angle  as  will  enable  us  correctly  to  measure  his 
stature.  Premising  that  it  would  be  folly  to  find 
fault  with  a  man  struggling  for  life  because  his 
attitudes  were  ungraceful,  remembering  the  Scyth 
ian  king's  answer  to  Alexander,  criticising  his 
strange  weapon, — "  If  you  knew  how  precious 
freedom  was,  you  would  defend  it  even  with  axes/' 
— we  must  see  that  O'Connell's  own  explanation 
is  evidently  sincere  and  true.  He  found  the  Irish 
heart  so  cowed,  and  Englishmen  so  arrogant,  that 
he  saw  it  needed  an  independence  verging  on  inso- 


THE  INTERESTS  THEN  AND  NOW      77 

lence,  a  defiance  that  touched  extremest  limits,  to 
breathe  self-respect  into  his  own  race,  teach  the 
aggressor  manners,  and  sober  him  into  respectful 
attention.  It  was  the  same  with  us  Abolitionists. 
Webster  had  taught  the  North  the  'bated  breath 
and  crouching  of  a  slave.  It  needed  with  us  an 
attitude  of  independence  that  was  almost  insolent, 
it  needed  that  we  should  exhaust  even  the  Saxon 
vocabulary  of  scorn,  to  fitly  utter  the  righteous 
and  haughty  contempt  that  honest  men  had  for 
man-stealers.  Only  in  that  way  could  we  wake 
the  North  to  self-respect,  or  teach  the  South  that 
at  length  she  had  met  her  equal,  if  not  her  master. 
On  a  broad  canvas,  meant  for  the  public  square, 
the  tiny  lines  of  a  Dutch  interior  would  be  in 
visible.  In  no  other  circumstances  was  the  French 
maxim,  "  You  can  never  make  a  revolution  with 
rose-water,"  more  profoundly  true.  The  world 
has  hardly  yet  learned  how  deep  a  philosophy  lies 
hid  in  Hamlet's, — 

"  Nay,  and  thou'lt  mouth, 
I'll  rant  as  well  as  thou." 

From  the  very  beginning  of  his  career  he 
saw  that  whoever  stopped  to  pay  heed  to  criti 
cism  would  never  get  anywhere.  To  his  mind 
the  only  important  thing  was  that  a  man  should 
strike  at  wrong  and  injustice  with  whatsoever 
weapon  he  could  command  and  care  naught 
what  might  be  said  of  the  posture  of  his  blows. 
Unless  he  did  his  best  without  compromise  and 
without  counting  the  cost  to  himself  he  could 
never  be  on  good  terms  with  that  conscience  that 


78  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

to  Phillips  was  the  strongest  and  highest  of  hu 
man  influences.  He  said  something  like  this  far 
back  in  the  early  days  of  his  anti-slavery  en 
listment,  on  that  occasion  when  he  shocked  and 
dismayed  the  placid  town  of  Concord : 

I  do  not  care  for  criticisms  upon  my  manner  of 
assailing  slavery.  In  a  struggle  for  life  it  is 
hardly  fair  for  men  who  are  lolling  at  ease  to  re 
mark  that  the  limbs  of  the  combatants  are  not 
arranged  in  classic  postures.  I  agree  with  the  last 
speaker  that  this  is  a  serious  subject;  had  it  been 
otherwise  I  should  not  devote  my  life  to  it. 
Stripling  as  I  am,  I  but  echo  the  voice  of  the  ages, 
of  our  venerable  forefathers  —  of  statesmen,  poets, 
philosophers.  The  gentleman  has  painted  the  dan 
gers  to  life,  liberty,  and  happiness  that  would  be 
the  consequence  of  doing  right.  These  dangers 
now  exist  by  law  at  the  South.  Liberty  may  be 
bought  at  too  dear  a  price;  if  I  cannot  have  it 
except  by  sin,  I  reject  it.  But  I  cannot  so  blas 
pheme  God  as  to  doubt  my  safety  in  obeying  Him. 
The  sanctions  of  English  law  are  with  me;  but 
if  I  tread  the  dust  of  law  beneath  my  feet  and 
enter  the  Holy  of  Holies,  what  do  I  find  writ 
ten  there?  "  Thou  shalt  not  deliver  unto  his  mas 
ter  the  servant  which  is  escaped  to  thee;  he  shall 
dwell  with  you,  even  among  you."  I  throw  my 
self  then  on  the  bosom  of  Infinite  Wisdom.  Even 
the  heathen  will  tell  you,  "  Let  justice  be  done 
though  the  heavens  fall  " ;  and  the  old  reformer 
answered  when  warned  against  the  danger  of  go 
ing  to  Rome,  "  It  is  not  necessary  that  I  should 
live;  it  2*  necessary  that  I  go  to  Rome."  But  now 
our  pulpits  are  silent  —  whoever  heard  this  sub- 


THE    INTERESTS    THEN    AND    NOW  79 

ject  presented  until  it  was  done  by  "  silly  women  " 
and  "striplings"?  The  first  speaker  accused  me 
of  ambition;  let  me  tell  him  that  ambition  chooses 
a  smoother  path  to  fame.  And  to  you,  my  young 
friends,  who  have  been  cautioned  against  exciting 
topics  and  advised  to  fold  your  hands  in  selfish 
ease,  I  .would  say,  Not  so  —  throw  yourselves  upon 
the  altar  of  some  noble  cause!  To  rise  in  the 
morning  only  to  eat  and  drink,  and  gather  gold  — 
that  is  a  life  not  worth  living.  Enthusiasm  is  the 
life  of  the  soul. 

The  difference  between  the  time-serving,  timid 
souled,  American  Congressman  and  the  men 
that  are  real  factors  in  progress  be  once  de 
scribed  in  an  article  in  the  Liberator,  and  the 
description  is  as  good  to-day  as  it  was  when 
it  was  written.  If  we  substitute  the  present 
struggle  against  wage  slavery  for  the  struggle 
against  chattel  slavery  that  was  uppermost  in 
Phillips's  mind  when  he  wrote  this  comparison, 
no  observer  of  these  times  will  note  any  differ 
ence.  He  said: 

The  reformer  is  careless  of  numbers,  disregards 
popularity,  and  deals  only  with  ideas,  conscience, 
and  common-sense.  He  feels,  with  Copernicus, 
that  as  God  waited  long  for  an  interpreter,  so  he 
can  wait  for  his  followers.  He  neither  expects 
nor  is  over-anxious  for  immediate  success.  The 
politician  dwells  in  an  everlasting  Now.  His 
motto  is  "Success" — his  aim,  votes.  His  object 
is  not  absolute  right,  but,  like  Solon's  laws,  as  much 
right  as  the  people  will  sanction.  His  office  is, 


80  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

not  to  instruct  public  opinion,  but  to  represent  it. 
Thus,  in  England,  Cobden,  the  reformer,  created 
sentiment,  and  Peel,  the  politician,  stereotyped  it 
into  statutes. 

This  very  idea  of  the  power  of  determined 
men,  however  few,  in  a  cause  of  righteousness 
he  expressed  far  better  than  any  of  us  could 
attempt  to  express  it  in  an  address  he  made  in 
April,  1872,  before  the  International  Grand 
Lodge  of  the  Knights  of  St.  Crispin.  The 
shoemakers'  trade  union  used  to  bear  this  name, 
so  it  appears  that  in  nomenclature,  anyway,  we 
have  made  some  progress.  Mr.  Phillips  said : 

I  am  told  that  you  represent  from  70,000  to 
100,000  men,  here  and  elsewhere.  Think  of  it! 
One  hundred  thousand  men !  They  can  dictate  the 
fate  of  this  nation.  Give  me  fifty  thousand  men 
in  earnest,  who  can  agree  on  all  vital  questions, 
who  will  plant  their  shoulders  together,  and  swear 
by  all  that  is  true  and  just  that  for  the  long  years 
they  will  put  their  great  idea  before  the  country, 
and  those  50,000  men  will  govern  the  nation.  So 
if  I  have  100,000  men  represented  before  me,  who 
are  in  earnest,  who  get  hold  of  the  great  question 
of  labor,  and  having  hold  of  it,  grapple  with  it, 
and  rip  it  and  tear  it  open,  and  invest  it  with 
light,  gathering  the  facts,  piercing  the  brains  about 
them  and  crowding  those  brains  with  the  facts  — 
then  I  know,  sure  as  fate,  though  I  may  not  live 
to  see  it,  that  they  will  certainly  conquer  this  na 
tion  in  twenty  years.  It  is  impossible  that  they 
should  not.  And  that  is  your  power,  gentlemen. 


THE    INTERESTS    THEN    AND    NOW  81 

And  again  he  saw  always  this  great  truth 
that  entrenched  privilege  is  not  to  be  dislodged 
by  passing  resolutions  and  devising  polite 
measures  of  reform,  but  by  sheer,  brutal, 
straight-out  fighting;  and  he  saw  that  the  very 
uncouthness  of  the  weapons  of  progress  against 
which  lady-like  and  perfumed  reformers  were 
always  objecting  was  in  itself  a  product  of  the 
conditions  it  combated.  Thus  to  workingmen 
he  said  once : 

I  know  labor  is  narrow;  I  know  she  is  aggres 
sive;  I  know  she  arms  herself  with  the  best  weap 
ons  that  a  corrupt  civilization  furnishes  —  all  true. 
Where  do  we  get  these  ideas?  Borrowed  them 
from  capital,  every  one  of  them;  and  when  you 
advance  to  us  on  the  level  of  peace,  unarmed,  we'll 
meet  you  on  the  same.  While  you  combine  and 
plot  and  defend,  so  will  we. 

But  Mr.  Johnson  says,  "  Come  into  the  world 
with  the  white  banner  of  peace."  Ay,  we  will, 
when  you  disarm.  .  .  .  Labor  comes  up  and  says, 
"  They  have  shotted  their  cannon  to  the  lips;  they 
have  rough  ground  their  swords  as  in  battle;  they 
have  adopted  every  new  method;  they  have  in 
vented  every  dangerous  machine  —  and  it  is  all 
planted  like  a  great  park  of  artillery  against  us. 
They  have  incorporated  wealth;  they  have  hidden 
behind  banks;  they  have  concealed  themselves  be 
hind  currency;  they  have  sheltered  themselves  in 
taxation ;  they  have  passed  rules  to  govern  us  — 
and  we  will  improve  upon  the  lesson  they  have 
taught  us.  When  they  disarm,  we  will  —  not  be 
fore!" 


STRIPPING  OFF  THE  MASKS 

FROM  1840  to  1859  the  whole  anti-slav 
ery  cause  seemed  to  move  in  immitigable 
gloom.  Most  of  its  advocates,  including 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  had  no  hope  that 
in  their  time  they  should  see  chattel  slavery 
overthrown.  While  the  Abolitionists  were  di 
vided  and  quarreling  about  woman  suffrage  and 
political  action,  the  united  slave-holding  inter 
ests  swept  from  victory  to  victory,  increasing 
every  year  their  hold  upon  the  nation.  They 
dominated  all  branches  of  the  government,  most 
of  the  courts,  both  of  the  great  parties.  Be 
tween  the  Whigs  and  the  Democrats  of  that  day 
was  only  this  difference,  that  the  Democrats 
went  a  little  further  in  abject  servility  to  the 
Interests  —  an  achievement  by  no  means  easy 
and  due  to  superior  ability,  not  to  surpassing 
desire. 

Yet  all  this  time  events  and  conditions  were 
at  work  unseen,  shaping  the  nation's  course  to 
82 


STRIPPING    OFF    THE    MASKS  83 

the  will  of  the  Abolitionists.  Beyond  their 
knowledge,  beyond  their  dreaming,  every  impor 
tant  event  was  reinforcing  their  appeals  to  the 
conscience  of  the  nation. 

The  great  intellectual  idol  of  the  North  and 
most  conspicuous  Whig  was  Daniel  Webster, 
then  a  Senator  from  Massachusetts.  Two  gen 
erations  of  American  school  children  have  been 
reared  to  reverence  this  man,  though  it  would 
puzzle  any  impartial  observer  to  say  why. 
There  was  not  one  thing  in  his  career  that  could 
appeal  to  a  reflective  person  as  worthy  of  ad 
miration.  He  was,  to  be  sure,  of  extraordinary 
appearance,  having  deep,  shaggy,  overhanging 
brows,  a  ponderous  head  and  deep-set  eyes 
of  a  remarkable  brilliancy,  and  it  must  be  on 
his  looks  alone  that  his  fame  is  founded.  He 
was  for  many  years  the  oratorical  model  of  the 
country  and  yet  an  analysis  of  his  speeches,  if 
anyone  to-day  should  make  such  a  study,  would 
show  chiefly  a  tawdry  and  an  over-ornamented 
rhetoric.  He  held  high  places  but  his  public 
papers  never  revealed  any  conception  of  pub 
lic  duty  beyond  a  cheap  sort  of  patriotism. 
His  "  Reply  to  Haynes  "  has  been  declaimed  by 
a  million  school  boys,  and  yet,  stripped  of  the 
halo  of  artificial  glory  that  surrounds  it,  is  but 
sorry  stuff.  In  all  his  career  he  never  devel- 


84  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

oped  one  idea  of  social  service,  never  said  one 
word  for  the  human  cause,  never  furthered  one 
aim  except  his  own  advancement ;  and  yet  for 
some  reason  the  North  was  possessed  of  an  ir 
rational  frenzy  about  him.  For  many  years  he 
had  cherished  the  common  and  fatal  ambition 
of  the  American  statesman.  He  wished  to  be 
President,  and  this  ambition  now  served  in  a 
singular  way  to  bring  about  the  sharper  clash 
between  slave  Interests  and  freemen  that  was 
needed  at  this  juncture  to  revive  the  Abolition 
cause. 

In  1850,  the  348,214  slave-owners,  being 
made  drunk  with  power,  introduced  in  Congress 
a  fugitive  slave  law  far  more  drastic  and  tyran 
nical  than  had  ever  before  been  conceived.  It 
not  only  transformed  all  government  officers, 
including  postmasters  and  deputy  marshals, 
into  slave-catchers,  but  provided  a  special  set 
of  slave-catching  commissioners,  punished  citi 
zens  that  hindered  captures  or  helped  escapes, 
and  rewarded  those  that  returned  a  slave. 

When  this  astounding  measure  reached  the 
Senate,  all  men  turned  to  Webster  to  see  what 
he  would  do.  Millions  of  men  that  liked  not 
Abolition  heaved  the  gorge  at  being  impressed 
as  man-catchers.  These  hoped  Webster  would 
attack  the  bill.  In  the  midst  of  a  tense  and 


STRIPPING    OFF    THE    MASKS  85 

dramatic  scene  in  the  Senate  chamber,  March 
7,  1850,  while  even  his  adversaries  seemed  sorry 
to  see  his  humiliation,  Webster  sold  himself  for 
the  chance  of  the  Presidency.  He  supported 
the  entire  measure. 

Against  this  wallowing  in  shame  the  masses 
of  the  people  at  the  North  mentally  revolted. 
The  official  and  social  North  congratulated  the 
man  on  his  abject  groveling,  but  "  Ichabod," 
Whittier's  greatest  poem,  struck  the  real  note 
of  popular  thought  and  launched  at  the  truck 
ler  the  scorn  he  had  earned : 

"So  lost!     So  fallen!     The  light  withdrawn 

That  once  he  bore; 
The  glory  of  his   gray  hairs  gone 
Forever  more !  " 

Revile  him  not, —  the  tempter  hath 

A  snare  for  all; 
And   pitying  tears,  not  scorn   and  wrath, 

Befit  his  fall! 

O,   dumb  be   passion's   stormy   rage 

When  he  who  might 
Have  lighted  up  and  led  his  age 

Falls  back  in  night. 

Scorn!     Would  the  angels  laugh  to  mark 

A  bright  soul  driven, 
Fiend  goaded,  down  the  endless  dark, 

From  hope  and  heaven! 


86  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

Let  not  the  land  once  proud  of  him 

Insult  him  now 
Nor  brand  with  deeper  shame  his  dim, 

Dishonored   brow. 

But  let  its  humbled  sons  instead 

From  sea  to  lake, 
A  long  lament,  as  for  the  dead, 

In  sadness  make. 

Of  all  we  loved  and  honored,  naught 

Save  power  remains, — 
A   fallen   angel's   pride   of  thought, 

Still  strong  in  chains. 

All  else  is  gone;  from  those  great  eyes 

The  soul  has  fled: 
When  faith  is  lost,  when  honor  dies, 

The  man  is  dead ! 

Then  pay  the  reverence  of  old  days 

To  his  dead  fame; 
Walk  backward  with  reverted  gaze 

And  hide  the  shame! 

"  The  man  is  dead !  "  the  poet  said.  He  was 
so,  indeed,  though  few  realized  the  fact.  To 
Phillips,  who  had  long  distrusted  and  despised 
Webster,  the  event  merely  confirmed  an  old 
judgment.  After  his  custom  he  used  it  as  a 
text  for  the  lessons  he  desired  to  enforce.  At  a 
Faneuil  Hall  meeting,  called  to  denounce  the 
Fugitive  Slave  law,  he  spoke  in  his  most  im 
pressive  style.  Later  he  returned  to  the  sub- 


STRIPPING    OFF    THE    MASKS  87 

ject  in  his  Fraternity  lecture  called  "  Idols," 
delivered  in  Boston  on  October  4,  1859,  so 
merciless  and  still  so  moving  that  it  leaves  the 
reader  almost  breathless.  It  contains  that  fa 
mous  excoriation  of  Rufus  Choate  still  de 
claimed  by  school  boys. 

Since  revolutionary  days  no  other  man  in 
Massachusetts  had  been  held  in  such  popular 
regard  as  Webster,  while  Rufus  Choate  was  the 
leader  of  the  Massachusetts  bar  and  mentioned 
with  reverence  by  the  ordinary  citizen.  To  at 
tack  these  two  men  was  a  bold  undertaking;  it 
was  flying  in  the  face  of  that  accepted  public 
opinion  that  Phillips  himself  described  as  the 
tyrant  of  the  republic.  Yet  he  knew  perfectly 
well  upon  what  flimsy  grounds  such  opinion 
existed  and  he  knew,  too,  that  in  these  cases 
the  esteem  in  which  the  men  was  held  was  with 
out  just  warrant,  since  neither  had  ever  done 
one  thing  for  that  cause  of  man  that  alone  is 
of  any  importance  in  this  world.  Therefore  in 
"  Idols  "  he  spared  not.  Webster's  statue  had 
recently  been  ordered  to  be  placed  in  the  State 
House.  That  was  the  occasion  for  the  present 
oration  and  the  explanation  of  its  title.  Here 
is  one  extract : 

The  honors  we  grant  mark  how  high  we  stand 
and  they  educate  the  future.  The  men  we  honor 


88  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

and  the  maxims  we  lay  down  in  measuring  our 
favorites  show  the  levels  and  morals  of  the  time. 
Two  men  have  been  in  every  one's  mouth  of  late 
and  men  have  exhausted  themselves  trying  to  pay 
their  admiration  and  their  respect.  The  courts 
have  covered  the  grave  of  Mr.  Choate  with  eulogy. 
We  are  told  that  "  he  worked  hard/'  "  he  never 
neglected  his  client,"  "  he  flung  over  the  discus 
sions  of  the  forum  the  grace  of  a  rare  scholar 
ship,"  "  no  pressure  or  emergency  ever  stirred  him 
to  an  unkind  word."  A  ripe  scholar,  a  profound 
lawyer,  a  faithful  servant  of  his  client,  a  gentle 
man.  This  is  a  good  record,  surely.  May  he 
sleep  in  peace!  What  he  earned,  God  grant  he 
may  have!  But  the  bar  that  seeks  to  claim  for 
such  a  one  a  place  among  great  jurists  must  itself 
be  weak  indeed;  for  this  is  only  to  make  him  out 
the  one-eyed  monarch  of  the  blind.  Not  one  high- 
moral  trait  specified;  not  one  patriotic  act  men 
tioned;  not  one  patriotic  service  claimed.  Look 
at  Mr.  Webster's  idea  of  what  a  lawyer  should 
be  in  order  to  be  called  great,  in  the  sketch  he 
drew  of  Jeremiah  Mason,  and  notice  what  stress 
he  lays  on  the  religious  and  moral  elevation,  and 
the  glorious  and  high  purposes  which  crowned  his 
life !  Nothing  of  this  now !  I  forget.  Mr.  Hal- 
lett  did  testify  for  Mr.  Choate's  religion.  But  the 
law  maxim  is  that  a  witness  should  be  trusted  only 
in  matters  he  understands,  and  the  evidence  there 
fore  amounts  to  nothing.  Incessant  eulogy;  but 
not  a  word  of  one  effort  to  lift  the  yoke  of  cruel 
or  unequal  legislation  from  the  neck  of  its  vic 
tims;  not  one  attempt  to  make  the  code  of  his 
country  wiser,  purer,  better;  not  one  effort  to 
bless  his  times  or  breathe  a  higher  moral  purpose 
into  the  community;  not  one  blow  struck  for  right 


STRIPPING    OFF    THE    MASKS  89 

or  for  liberty  while  the  battle  of  the  giants  was 
going  on  about  him;  not  one  patriotic  act  to  stir 
the  hearts  of  his  idolators;  not  one  public  act  of 
any  kind  whatever  about  whose  merit  friend  or 
foe  could  even  quarrel,  unless  when  he  scouted 
our  great  charter  as  a  "  glittering  generality,"  or 
jeered  at  the  philanthropy  which  tried  to  prac 
tise  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  When  Cordus,  the 
Roman  senator,  whom  Tiberius  murdered,  was  ad 
dressing  his  fellows  he  began :  "  Fathers,  they 
accuse  me  of  illegal  words;  plain  proof  that  there 
are  no  illegal  deeds  with  which  to  charge  me." 
So  with  these  eulogies  —  words,  nothing  but  words ; 
plain  proof  there  were  no  deeds  to  praise. 

His  final  flaying  of  Choate  will  probably  en 
dure  so  long  as  anything  in  oratorical  literature 
endures : 

Yet  this  is  the  model  which  Massachusetts  offers 
to  the  Pantheon  of  the  great  jurists  of  the  world! 

Suppose  we  stood  in  that  lofty  temple  of  juris 
prudence, —  on  either  side  of  us  the  statues  of  the 
great  lawyers  of  every  age  and  clime, —  and  let 
us  see  what  part  New  England  —  Puritan,  edu 
cated,  free  New  England  —  would  bear  in  the 
pageant.  Rome  points  to  a  colossal  figure,  and 
says,  "  That  is  Papinian,  who,  when  the  Emperor 
Caracalla  murdered  his  own  brother,  and  ordered 
the  lawyer  to  defend  the  deed,  went  cheerfully  to 
death,  rather  than  sully  his  lips  with  the  atrocious 
plea;  and  that  is  Ulpian,  who,  aiding  his  prince 
to  put  the  army  below  the  law,  was  massacred  at 
the  foot  of  a  weak,  but  virtuous  throne." 

And  France  stretches  forth  her  grateful  hands, 
crying,  "  That  is  D'Aguesseau,  worthy,  when  he 


90  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

went  to  face  an  enraged  king,  of  the  farewell  his 
wife  addressed  him  — '  Go !  forget  that  you  have 
a  wife  and  children  to  ruin,  and  remember  only 
that  you  have  France  to  save/  " 

England  says,  "  That  is  Coke,  who  flung  the 
laurels  of  eighty  years  in  the  face  of  the  first 
Stuart,  in  defence  of  the  people.  This  is  Selden, 
on  every  book  of  whose  library  you  saw  written 
the  motto  of  which  he  lived  worthy,  '  Before  every 
thing,  Liberty ! '  That  is  Mansfield,  silver-tongued, 
who  proclaimed, 

'  '  Slaves  cannot  breathe  in  England;  if  their  lungs 
Receive  our  air,  that  moment  they  are  free.' 

"  This  is  Romilly,  who  spent  life  trying  to  make 
law  synonymous  with  justice,  and  succeeded  in 
making  life  and  property  safer  in  every  city  of 
the  empire.  And  that  is  Erskine,  whose  eloquence, 
spite  of  Lord  Eldon  and  George  III,  made  it  safe 
to  speak  and  to  print." 

Then  New  England  shouts,  "  This  is  Choate, 
who  made  it  safe  to  murder;  and  of  whose  health 
thieves  asked  before  they  began  to  steal." 

Of  Webster,  Phillips  said: 

No  man  criticises  when  private  friendship  moulds 
the  loved  form  in 

"  Stone  that  breathes  and  struggles, 
Or  brass  that  seems  to  speak." 

Let  Mr.  Webster's  friends  crowd  their  own  halls 
and  grounds  with  his  bust  and  statues.  That  is 
no  concern  of  ours.  But  when  they  ask  the  State 
to  join  in  doing  him  honor,  then  we  claim  the  right 
to  express  an  opinion.  .  .  .  We  cannot  but  remem- 


STRIPPING    OFF    THE    MASKS  91 

ber  that  the  character  of  the  commonwealth  is 
shown  by  the  character  of  those  it  crowns.  A 
brave  old  Englishman  tells  us  the  Greeks  had  offi 
cers  who  did  pluck  down  statues  if  they  exceeded 
due  symmetry  and  proportion.  "  We  need  such 
now,"  he  adds,  "  to  order  monuments  according 
to  men's  merits."  Indeed  we  do!  When  I  think 
of  the  long  term  and  wide  reach  of  his  influence, 
and  look  at  the  subjects  of  his  speeches, —  the  mere 
shells  of  history,  drum-and-trumpet  declamation, 
dry  law,  or  selfish  bickerings  about  trade, —  when 
I  think  of  his  bartering  the  hopes  of  four  millions 
of  bondmen  for  the  chances  of  his  private  ambi 
tion,  I  recall  the  criticism  on  Lord  Eldon, — "  No 
man  ever  did  his  race  so  much  good  as  Eldon  pre 
vented."  Again,  when  I  remember  the  close  of 
his  life  spent  in  ridiculing  the  Anti-Slavery  move 
ment  as  useless  abstraction,  moonshine,  "  mere 
rub-a-dub  agitation,"  because  it  did  not  minister 
to  trade  and  gain,  methinks  I  seem  to  see  written 
all  over  his  statue  Tocqueville's  conclusion  from 
his  survey  of  French  and  American  democracy, — 
"  The  man  who  seeks  freedom  for  anything  but 
freedom's  self,  is  made  to  be  a  slave !  " 

Edward  Everett,  who  was  to  the  slave-hold 
ing  Interests  of  his  day  such  a  facile  and  knee- 
crooking  valet  as  many  a  United  States  Sena 
tor  has  been  to  the  profit-gouging  Interests 
of  our  times,  had  delivered  on  Webster  one  of 
those  eulogies  that  produce  mental  nausea  in 
every  healthy  reader.  Mr.  Phillips  deals  with 
Everett  too,  according  to  his  deserts: 


92  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

Blame  me  not  that  I  again  open  the  record,  Mr. 
Chairman.  His  injudicious  friends  will  not  let 
him  die.  Indeed,  the  heavy  yoke  he  laid  on  inno 
cent  and  friendless  victims  frets  and  curses  them 
yet  too  keenly  to  allow  him  to  be  forgotten.  He 
reaps  only  what  he  sowed.  In  the  Talmud  the 
Jews  have  a  story  that  Og,  King  of  Bashan,  lifted 
once  a  great  rock  to  hurl  it  on  the  armies  of  Judah. 
God  hollowed  it  in  the  middle,  letting  it  slip  over 
the  giant's  neck,  there  to  rest  while  he  lived.  This 
man  lifted  the  Fugitive  Slave  Bill  to  hurl  it,  as 
at  Syracuse,  on  the  trembling  and  hunted  slave, 
and  God  has  hung  it  like  a  mill-stone  about  his 
neck  for  evermore.  While  the  echoes  of  Everett's 
periods  still  lingered  in  our  streets,  as  I  stood  with 
the  fresh  printed  sheet  of  his  eulogy  in  my  hand, 
there  came  to  me  a  man,  successful  after  eight 
attempts  in  flying  from  bondage.  Week  after 
week  he  had  been  in  the  woods,  half-starved,  seek 
ing  in  vain  a  shelter.  For  months  he  had  pined 
in  dungeons,  waiting  the  sullen  steps  of  his  mas 
ter.  At  last  God  blessed  the  eighth  effort  and  he 
stood  in  Boston  on  his  glad  way  from  the  vulture 
of  the  States  to  the  safe  refuge  of  English  law. 
He  showed  me  his  broad  bosom  scarred  all  over 
with  the  branding  iron,  his  back  one  mass  of  rec 
ords  how  often  the  lash  had  tortured  him  for  his 
noble  efforts  to  get  free.  As  I  looked  at  him  the 
empty  and  lying  eulogy  dropped  from  my  nerve 
less  hand  and  I  thanked  God  that  statue  and  eulogy 
both  were  only  a  horrid  nightmare  and  that  there 
were  still  roofs  in  Boston,  safe  shelter  for  these 
heroic  children  of  God's  right  hand ! 

The  impression  created  by  Webster's  bargain 
and  the  bill  he  supported  did  not  wear  off ;  they 


STRIPPING    OFF    THE    MASKS  93 

were  of  the  order  of  things  that  men  do  not 
easily  forget.  Slowly  the  people  began  to 
awaken  to  the  true  nature  of  the  power  that 
had  subverted  the  Republic.  The  South,  dis 
daining  Webster's  sacrifice,  contemptuously  re 
fused  him  the  mess  of  pottage  for  which  he  had 
bartered  his  soul.  Disappointment  and  the 
signs  of  popular  disgust  shortened  his  life. 
President  Fillmore  rewarded  him  by  making 
him  Secretary  of  State,  but  he  died  in  two 
years,  and  his  place  in  the  Senate  was  filled  by 
Charles  Sumner,  who  from  the  same  platform 
in  Faneuil  Hall  with  Wendell  Phillips  and  Fred 
erick  Douglass,  the  Negro,  had  denounced  Web 
ster  for  his  surrender.  Massachusetts  had 
taken  the  first  forward  step. 

Upon  every  phase  of  these  developments  Phil 
lips  kept  watch,  seeking  to  turn  each  to  the  ad 
vantage  of  his  cause.  The  most  singular  thing 
is  that  in  all  the  darkest  days  of  the  movement 
there  is  not  in  his  speeches  nor  letters  nor  re 
corded  comments  one  note  of  discouragement. 
He  seems  to  tower  above  average  men,  seeing 
over  their  heads  to  the  end  of  the  road.  To 
him  the  failure  of  Abolition  was  unthinkable. 
If  men  turned  traitor  or  ceased  from  the  fight, 
so  much  the  worse  for  them.  When  the  North 
cringed,  Phillips  jeered  in  its  face.  When  the 


94  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

South  threatened  to  secede,  he  cried,  "  Let  it 
go !  "  Nothing  could  take  him  by  surprise  or 
find  him  unprepared.  When  audiences  hissed 
and  threatened  to  lynch  him,  he  flung  back  their 
taunts  and  turned  their  ridicule  upon  them 
selves.  He  never  flinched,  never  hesitated, 
never  modified  his  expressions,  never  made  a  con 
cession  to  hostile  public  sentiment,  never  lost 
a  chance  to  strike  a  blow,  and  was  altogether 
the  most  indomitable,  irrepressible,  and  insist 
ent  fighter  in  history. 

At  Cincinnati  once  in  these  days  he  was  to 
lecture  before  an  audience,  nine-tenths  of  which 
would  have  been  delighted  to  see  him  hanged. 
He  knew  perfectly  well  what  he  faced,  but  with 
unruffled  composure  he  walked  down  the  stage 
and  stood  waiting  for  silence.  When  it  came 
he  held  up  a  single  sheet  of  paper.  All  eyes 
were  now  fixed  upon  him ;  all  men  sat  breath 
lessly  watching.  "  If  this  sheet  of  paper,"  be 
gan  Mr.  Phillips  in  his  dulcet  tones,  "  were  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  and  I  thought 
it  permanently  protected  the  infamy  of  slave- 
holding,  I  would  tear  it  into  pieces  like  this," 
and  he  tore  the  paper  into  fragments  and  flung 
them  at  his  feet.  With  snarls  and  howls  men 
rushed  over  the  foot-lights  to  seize  him.  Be- 


STRIPPING    OFF    THE    MASKS  95 

fore  they  could  reach  him,  friends  from  behind 
had  grasped  him  in  their  arms,  hurled  him  into 
a  carriage  at  the  stage  door  and  whipped  him 
away  to  safety. 

Again  in  Cincinnati  some  years  later,  a  man 
brought  to  the  hall  a  bottle  of  vitriol  intending 
to  throw  it  in  Mr.  Phillips's  face.  A  great 
paving  stone  was  pitched  at  him  from  a  gallery 
box  and  crashed  into  the  stage  at  his  feet. 
Often  men  came  to  his  meetings  with  ropes  in 
their  pockets  to  hang  him. 

And  yet  under  the  surface  of  things  appar 
ently  so  untoward  the  seed  sown  by  the  Aboli 
tionists  was  bearing  unsuspected  fruit.  Gar 
rison,  Phillips  and  the  others  like  them  touched 
the  consciences  of  men ;  therein  lay  their 
power.  Every  day  the  Abolitionist  band,  so 
led  and  inspired,  grew  in  numbers  and  activity. 
Slowly  righteous  men  regained  their  courage 
as  they  gazed  upon  leaders  that  were  without 
fear.  Among  such  men,  as  a  compensation 
for  his  usual  experiences  Phillips  found  some 
times  a  strength  of  love  that  must  have  warmed 
his  heart,  and  even  among  the  indifferent  or 
the  hostile  was  often  an  admission  of  his  un 
matched  oratory.  As  illustrating  this  and 
also  his  power  to  interest  and  to  please  I  may 


96          THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

mention  the  fact,  unique,  I  think,  in  the  his 
tory  of  the  American  platform,  that  on  one 
visit  to  Cortland,  New  York,  he  was  called 
upon  to  deliver  four  lectures  in  twenty-six 
hours. 


VI 

JOHN  BROWN  AND  HARPER'S  FERRY 

BUT  to  return  to  the  events  that  swung 
the  nation  behind  the  Abolitionists.  Two 
years  after  the  passage  of  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Law  came  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin/' 
which  focussed  the  country's  attention  upon  the 
essential  immorality  of  slavery.  The  same 
year  the  Whigs  were  annihilated  in  the  Presi 
dential  election  and  thoughtful  men  perceived 
that  a  new  party,  based  upon  stronger  opposi 
tion  to  the  slave  Interests,  was  inevitable.  Yet 
those  Interests  continued  to  walk  their  wild  road 
whither  that  led.  In  1854  they  passed  the 
Kansas  and  Nebraska  bill,  repealing  the  Mis 
souri  Compromise  and  opening  all  the  Terri 
tories  to  the  advance  of  slavery.  In  the 
same  year  they  secured  the  arrest  and  indict 
ment  of  Mr.  Phillips  and  Theodore  Parker  for 
obstructing  the  enforcement  of  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Law.  On  May  22,  1856,  Preston  S. 
Brooks,  a  Representative  from  South  Carolina, 
97 


98  THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

stole  into  the  Senate  Chamber,  crept  behind 
Charles  Sumner  as  he  sat  at  his  desk  writing, 
and  beat  him  almost  to  death  with  a  heavy  cane 
—  for  the  sake  of  the  cause  of  Profits.  The 
same  year  the  Republican  party  was  launched 
with  John  C.  Fremont  as  its  President  on  a  plat 
form  frankly  inimical  to  the  slave  oligarchy 
and  cast  an  ominously  large  vote.  In  1857 
the  Supreme  Court,  controlled  by  the  Interests, 
handed  down  the  Dred  Scott  decision,  and  Chief 
Justice  Taney  therein  advanced  the  doctrine 
that  "  the  black  man  has  no  rights  that  the 
white  man  is  bound  to  respect."  Extraordi 
nary  are  the  potentialities  of  a  phrase !  To  the 
aroused  conscience  of  the  country,  steadily  ad 
dressed  by  the  Abolitionists,  this  phrase  struck 
home  with  peculiar  force.  It  was  something 
concrete  and  easily  understandable;  something 
also  that  seemed  to  embody  in  a  few  words  the 
whole  spirit  of  the  slave-holding  Interests. 
Men  that  had  no  strong  aversion  to  slavery  and 
detested  the  Abolitionists  rejected  the  idea  that 
a  Negro  was  something  less  than  a  horse  or  a 
dog  and  began  belatedly  to  perceive  the  irre 
pressible  struggle. 

The  passage  of  the  Kansas  and  Nebraska 
bill  and  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise 
were  followed  by  civil  war  in  Kansas.  The 


JOHN    BROWN    AND    HARPER'S    FERRY         99 

question  of  slavery  or  freedom  being  left  to  the 
people  of  that  Territory,  the  slave  Interests  de 
termined  to  win  it  for  slavery.  To  that  end 
they  poured  their  adherents  into  Kansas,  seized 
the  Territorial  government,  stuffed  the  ballot- 
boxes,  dispossessed  the  officers  that  had  been 
legally  elected,  and  began  everywhere  to  drive 
out  the  anti-slavery  element.  In  response 
Free  Soil  champions  preached  a  new  crusade 
that  was  assumed  by  thousands;  the  contend 
ing  forces  met  in  desperate  struggles  that  made 
Kansas  truly  a  dark  and  bloody  ground:  and 
at  last  there  appeared  on  the  scene  the  com 
manding  figure  of  John  Brown. 

We  have  no  need  to  follow  here  all  the  de 
velopments  of  the  story.  When  Kansas  had 
been  made  a  Free  State,  Brown  returned  to  the 
East  and  began  to  meditate  the  enterprise  that 
culminated  in  Harper's  Ferry.  For  their  own 
good  reasons,  doubtless,  reactionary  writers  like 
John  Hay  and  Theodore  Roosevelt  have  de 
scribed  this  as  an  insane  freak  and  Brown  him 
self  as  a  half-mad  fanatic.  They  overlook  the 
fact  that  Brown  explained  his  plans  and  ideas 
in  the  utmost  detail  to  some  of  the  ablest  Aboli 
tionist  leaders,  and  that  cool-headed  men  like 
Parker  and  Frank  Sanborn,  and  men  of  peace 
like  Gerrit  Smith,  gave  him  their  complete  sup- 


100        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

port.  His  project  failed,  to  be  sure,  and 
Brown  was  hanged.  Immediate  success  is  the 
only  test  the  reactionary  mind  can  apply  to  any 
thing.  Brown  made  an  armed  movement  into 
the  South;  he  was  captured  and  hanged. 
Therefore  he  was  a  madman.  Minds  of  this 
order  cannot  grasp  the  ideals  of  a  man  that 
felt  he  would  rather  die  protesting  than  live  in 
a  State  whose  constitution  sanctioned  human 
slavery.  Elsewhere,  liberty-lovers  easily  un 
derstood.  To  France,  for  instance,  John 
Brown  became  one  of  the  world  heroes.  "  That 
ends  slavery  in  America ! "  said  Victor  Hugo, 
when  he  heard  of  Brown's  hanging.  Few  in 
America  saw  the  truth  so  clearly. 
-  From  all  these  developments  Mr.  Phillips 
pointed  anew  his  familiar  insistence  that  until 
slavery  were  abolished  there  could  be  neither 
peace,  security  nor  national  righteousness. 
As  he  had  protested  vehemently  against  the 
Mexican  war,  calling  it  a  wicked  device  to  en 
large  the  slave  territory,  so  in  successive 
speeches  he  entered  separate  protests  against 
the  Kansas  and  Nebraska  bill,  against  the  as 
sault  upon  Sumner  and  the  applause  that 
greeted  the  assault,  against  the  Dred  Scott 
decision,  against  the  attempt  to  seize  Kansas 


for  slavery,  against  the  trial  of  John  Brown, 
and  now  against  his  hanging. 

This  was  one  of  his  historic  utterances.  It 
was  delivered  in  Henry  Ward  Beecher's  Ply 
mouth  Church,  Brooklyn.  To  speak  as  Phil 
lips  spoke  then  required  a  high  order  of  moral 
courage.  The  cherished  hope  of  the  slave 
holders  was  that  they  could  implicate  Phillips 
in  Brown's  plot,  have  him  indicted  as  accessory, 
and  thus  get  him  into  slave-holding  territory 
where  he  could  be  hanged.  His  house  was 
watched,  he  was  dogged  by  detectives  and  there 
was  a  likelihood  that  his  papers  would  be  seized 
and  examined.  Entirely  undismayed  by  all 
these  conditions,  Mr.  Phillips  openly  avowed 
his  complete  sympathy  with  Brown's  attempt. 

People  do  me  the  honor  to  say,  in  some  of  the 
Western  papers,  that  this  is  traceable  to  some 
teachings  of  mine.  It  is  too  much  honor  to  such 
as  me.  Gladly,  if  it  were  not  fulsome  vanity, 
would  I  clutch  this  laurel  of  having  .any  share 
in  the  great  resolute  daring  of  that  man  who  flung 
himself  against  an  empire  in  behalf  of  justice  and 
liberty.  They  were  not  the  bravest  men  who 
fought  at  Saratoga  and  Yorktown  in  the  war  of 
1776.  O  no!  It  was  rather  those  who  flung 
themselves  at  Lexington,  few  and  feeble,  against 
the  embattled  ranks  of  an  empire,  till  then  thought 
irresistible.  .  .  . 

"Commonwealth    of    Virginia!"     There    is    no 


THE    STOEY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

such  thing.  Lawless,  brutal  force  is  no  basis  of 
a  government,  in  the  true  sense  of  that  word.  No 
civil  society,  no  government,  can  exist  except  on 
the  basis  of  the  willing  submission  of  all  its  citi 
zens  and  by  the  performance  of  the  duty  of  ren 
dering  equal  justice  between  man  and  man. 

Whatever  calls  itself  a  government,  and  refuses 
that  duty,  or  has  not  that  assent,  is  no  govern 
ment.  It  is  only  a  pirate  ship.  Virginia  —  the 
Commonwealth  of  Virginia!  She  is  only  a  chronic 
insurrection.  I  mean  exactly  what  I  say.  I  am 
weighing  my  words  now.  She  is  a  pirate  ship  and 
John  Brown  sails  the  sea,  a  lord  high  admiral  of 
the  Almighty  with  his  commission  to  sink  every 
pirate  he  meets  on  God's  ocean  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century.  I  mean  literally  and  exactly  what  I  say. 
In  God's  world  there  are  no  majorities,  no  minori 
ties;  one  on  God's  side  is  a  majority.  .  .  .  John 
Brown  has  twice  as  much  right  to  hang  Governor 
Wise  as  Governor  Wise  has  to  hang  him.  .  .  . 

But  John  Brown  violated  the  law.  Yes.  On 
yonder  desk  lie  the  inspired  words  of  men  who 
died  violent  deaths  for  breaking  the  laws  of 
Rome.  Why  do  you  listen  to  them  so  reverently? 
Huss  and  Wickliffe  violated  laws;  why  honor 
them?  George  Washington,  had  he  been  caught 
before  1783,  would  have  died  on  the  gibbet  for 
breaking  the  laws  of  his  sovereign.  Yet  I  have 
heard  that  man  praised  within  six  months.  Yes, 
you  say,  but  these  men  broke  bad  laws.  Just  so. 
It  is  honorable,  then,  to  break  bad  laws  and  such 
law-breaking  history  loves  and  God  blesses !  Who 
says,  then,  that  slave-laws  are  not  ten  thousand 
times  worse  than  any  these  men  resisted?  What 
ever  argument  excuses  them  makes  John  Brown 
a  saint. 


JOHN    BROWN    AND    HARPER*S    FERRY        103 

The  next  day  after  that  portentous  tragedy 
at  Charlestown  he  went  to  New  York  and  ac 
companied  the  body  to  North  Elba,  Brown's  old 
home,  where  it  was  to  be  buried.  It  was  he  that 
pronounced  the  funeral  oration,  most  moving  of 
all  his  addresses,  most  moving  of  all  memorial 
addresses  in  the  language.  Its  closing  words 
will  live  in  the  memory  of  every  person  that 
ever  read  them,  when  after  reviewing  Brown's 
heroism  and  sacrifice  he  said: 

God  make  us  all  worthier  of  him  whose  dust 
we  lay  among  these  hills  he  loved.  Here  he  girded 
himself  and  went  forth  to  battle.  Fuller  success 
than  his  heart  ever  dreamed  God  granted  him. 
He  sleeps  in  the  blessings  of  the  crushed  and  the 
poor,  and  men  believe  more  firmly  in  virtue  now 
that  such  a  man  lias  lived.  Standing  here,  let  us 
thank  God  for  a  firmer  faith  and  fuller  hope. 

The  next  year,  1860,  saw  the  prearranged 
division  of  the  Democratic  party,  the  election 
of  Lincoln  and  the  birth  of  the  Southern  Con 
federacy.  At  first  Mr.  Phillips  thought  that 
to  allow  the  seceding  States  to  depart  would 
be  better  than  to  try  to  detain  them  with  force. 
Their  absence  would  at  least  clear  from  what 
was  left  of  the  Union  the  stain  of  slavery,  and 
he  believed  it  would  in  time  work  out  the 
death  of  the  institution  even  in  the  South  it 
self.  Most  persons  at  the  North,  frightened  at 


104        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

the  prospect,  favored  every  concession  that 
would  induce  the  Southern  States  to  remain. 
In  Massachusetts  a  very  strong  movement  was 
under  way  to  repeal  the  Personal  Liberty  Act, 
of  which  Mr.  Phillips  was  one  of  the  authors, 
because  it  had  given  offense  to  the  slave  Inter 
ests.  At  Washington  a  bill,  supported  if  not 
actually  drawn  by  Lincoln  himself,  was  intro 
duced  to  prohibit  any  agitation  of  the  question 
of  slavery. 

On  December  2,  I860,  Phillips  was  an 
nounced  to  speak  in  Tremont  Temple  against 
slavery.  The  Interests  induced  the  mayor  to 
close  the  hall  against  him.  Phillips  repaired 
to  the  colored  people's  church  in  Belknap 
Street,  and  delivered  his  address  there.  The 
rioters  attempted  to  seize  him  but  his  friends 
hurried  him  out  of  the  rear  entrance  toward 
his  home.  Before  he  reached  Essex  Street  the 
mob  had  discovered  him  and  poured  across  the 
Common  in  pursuit.  A  bodyguard  of  young 
men  protected  him,  marching  in  a  circle  with 
locked  arms  about  him  until  he  reached  his 
house. 

Theodore  Parker,  the  Abolitionist  preacher 
of  Boston,  was  now  dead  and  Mr.  Phillips  some 
times  supplied  his  pulpit.  Two  weeks  after  the 
Belknap  Street  riot  Mr.  Phillips  delivered  an- 


other  anti-slavery  speech  in  Parker's  pulpit. 
Again  the  mob  was  there,  attempting  first  to 
break  up  the  meeting  and  then  to  lynch  the 
speaker,  and  again  he  was  protected  to  his 
home  by  his  volunteer  body  guard.  I  take 
pleasure  in  noting  that  this  was  composed  of 
German  Turners.  The  Turn  Verein  had  heard 
of  the  attempt  to  throttle  free  speech  and  had 
resolved  to  defend  its  champion,  and  for  weeks 
members  of  the  Verein  mounted  guard  day  and 
night  over  the  Phillips  house. 

On  January  20,  he  spoke  again  from  Par 
ker's  pulpit  and  the  previous  scenes  were  re 
peated,  except  that  the  mob  was  larger,  more 
determined  and  more  blood-thirsty.  It  was 
necessary  for  the  police,  who  had  hitherto  been 
held  off  by  the  pro-slavery  mayor,  to  assist  the 
Turners,  and  one  of  the  policemen  subsequently 
testified  to  tHe  difficulty  with  which  Mr.  Phil- 
lips's  life  was  saved. 

Yet  on  each  of  these  occasions  he  appeared 
to  be  above  fear,  spoke  with  all  of  his  old  time 
fire  and  effectiveness,  and  declared  his  position 
unequivocally.  On  February  17,  he  spoke 
again  from  Parker's  pulpit  on  "  Progress  "  and 
again  a  phalanx  of  friends  of  free  speech  must 
be  drawn  about  him  as  a  bulwark.  But  as  he 
spoke  on,  men  that  had  come  resolved  to  hang 


106        THE    STOEY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

him  listened  to  his  words,  launched  in  that  mar 
velous  voice;  gradually  they  forgot  their  pas 
sions  ;  at  last  conquered  in  spite  of  their  preju 
dices,  they  joined  with  the  rest  of  the  audience 
in  tumultuous  applause. 

The  war  came,  and  in  the  presence  of  the 
national  crisis  Mr.  Phillips  resumed  his  duties 
as  an  American  citizen,  fervently  supported  the 
Union,  and  used  his  eloquence  to  further  en 
listments  and  to  encourage  the  nation  in  those 
trying  hours.  He  did  not  like  Lincoln  and  did 
not  trust  him,  believing  him  to  be  a  politician 
and  an  opportunist  without  convictions  against 
slavery.  He  was  repelled  by  Lincoln's  declara 
tion  that  he  would  save  the  Union  with  slavery 
if  he  could  and  without  slavery  if  he  must ;  by 
his  endorsement  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  and 
attempts  to  enforce  it  in  the  first  part  of  the 
war ;  by  the  long  postponement  of  emancipation, 
and  by  the  earlier  conduct  of  the  war  upon  rea 
sons  of  political  tactics.  On  these  matters  he 
freely  criticized  the  administration  while  he  sup 
ported  it.  But  when  Abraham  Lincoln  was  as 
sassinated  the  most  eloquent  tribute  to  his  good 
qualities  came  from  the  lips  of  Wendell  Phillips 
in  the  memorial  address  of  April  23,  1865,  de 
livered  at  Tremont  Temple.  "  These  are  sober 
days,"  began  Mr.  Phillips.  "The  judgments 


of  God  have  found  us  out,"  and  he  proceeded 
to  show  that  the  barbarism  of  slavery  had 
echoed  in  the  barbarism  of  assassination,  and  in 
this  way  we  were  paying  our  penalty  for  our 
long  indifference  to  a  national  sin.  "  And 
what  of  him,"  he  said,  "  in  whose  precious  blood 
this  momentous  lesson  is  writ?  He  sleeps  in 
the  blessings  of  the  poor,  whose  fetters  God 
commissioned  him  to  break." 

The  terrible  event  turned  the  joy  of  the 
Abplitionists  to  mourning.  Yet  their  thirty 
years'  war  had  ended  in  triumph ;  their  cause 
was  won.  Five  days  before  Lincoln  fell,  the 
flag  had  been  restored  upon  Fort  Sumter  in  the 
harbor  of  Charleston,  against  which  the  first 
shot  of  the  Rebellion  had  been  fired.  A  dis 
tinguished  company  of  public  men  attended  the 
ceremony ;  Henry  Ward  Beecher  was  the  orator 
of  the  day,  Henry  Wilson,  Judge  Holt  and 
George  Thompson  of  England  were  there.  So 
was  one  other  man.  Thirty  years  before,  he 
had  been  dragged  through  the  streets  of  Bos 
ton  to  be  hanged  for  preaching  the  abolition  of 
slavery;  now  with  slavery  abolished  he  stood 
the  nation's  honored  guest  at  the  ceremonies 
that  marked  the  end  of  the  long  struggle. 
What  must  have  been  the  emotions  that  day  of 
William  Lloyd  Garrison! 


108        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

And  jet  the  satisfaction  that  belongs  to  these 
thoughts  is  dimmed,  it  must  be  admitted,  in 
anyone  that  stops  to  consider  the  present  state 
of  the  people  that  with  such  a  staggering  ex 
penditure  of  blood  and  treasure  were  set  free. 

Chattel  slavery  was  abolished;  the  deadly 
clutch  of  35  per  cent,  profit  was  taken  from 
the  throats  of  the  colored  race ;  but  the  day  of 
justice  and  reparation  for  which  Phillips  and 
Garrison  labored  is  still  put  afar  off  by  sur 
viving  feudalism  and  surviving  savagery.  If 
the  men  that  at  such  risk  of  life  and  with  such 
sacrifices  agitated  for  freedom  could  return 
now  to  see  the  extent  to  which  their  work  has 
been  nullified  in  the  South  they  might  ques 
tion  whether  much  of  it  had  not  been  in  vain. 
Certainly  a  condition  in  which  Americans  of 
dark  complexion  are  denied  because  of  that 
complexion  the  rights  guaranteed  by  the  Con 
stitution,  the  protection  of  the  laws,  the  ordi 
nary  operations  of  justice,  the  place  of  citi 
zens,  the  commonest  considerations  of  human 
ity,  is  a  condition  of  which  the  old  self-sacri 
ficing  Abolitionists  never  dreamed  and  no 
thoughtful  American  at  the  close  of  the  war 
would  have  thought  possible.  Who,  for  in 
stance,  would  have  thought  that  in  seven  states 
of  the  Union  the  Constitution  would  be  openly 


abolished  to  gratify  a  mere  racial  prejudice  or 
that  we  should  ever  see  a  condition  of  hclotage 
legally  established  for  millions  of  our  fellow 
Americans?  Who  would  have  thought  that 
such  things  could  be  done  without  a  protest 
from  the  regions  that  produced  the  Garrisons, 
Phillipses,  Browns,  Gerrit  Smiths,  Stevenses 
and  the  rest  that  thundered  against  the  other 
kind  of  slavery?  And  who  can  reflect  upon 
these  conditions  and  avoid  the  thought  that 
there  is  as  urgent  need  now  of  a  Phillips  and  a 
Garrison  as  there  was  in  1833? 

What  Wendell  Phillips  would  have  thought, 
for  instance,  of  the  "  Jim  Crow  car,"  that 
hideous  disgrace  to  our  civilization,  we  know 
well  enough  from  the  testimony  of  Frederick 
Douglass.  Before  the  war  the  steamboats  on 
Long  Island  Sound  and  elsewhere  in  the  North 
would  not  allow  a  colored  person  to  travel 
otherwise  than  as  a  "  deck  "  or  steerage  pas 
senger,  which  is  to  say  that  colored  persons 
were  not  allowed  a  place  to  sleep.  Phillips 
knew  this  and  whenever  he  was  on  the  same  boat 
with  Douglass  he  would  leave  his  own  cabin 
and  spend  the  night  on  the  forward  deck  with 
the  great  colored  man,  walking  to  and  fro  in 
conversation.  He  felt  that  so  long  as  such 
savage  regulations  existed  he  had  no  right  to 


110        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

a  greater  luxury  than  was  allowed  to  his 
brother  of  darker  skin. 

We  may  know  well  enough,  therefore,  that 
if  the  life  of  Mr.  Phillips  had  been  prolonged, 
neither  the  barbarous  "  Jim  Crow  "  laws  nor 
the  laws  that  nullify  the  Constitution  and  de 
prive  the  colored  American  of  his  rights  would 
have  been  passed  without  at  least  one  vehe 
ment  protest. 

It  is  certain,  too,  that  he  would  have  real 
ized  the  true  underlying  causes  for  a  condition 
in  which  10,000,000  people  are  the  victims  of 
such  wrong  and  injustice.  He  would  have 
seen  that  aside  from  the  natural  snobbishness 
of  a  certain  American  element  and  the  rancors 
left  by  the  war,  the  true  origin  of  these  perse 
cutions  was  solely  economic.  He  would  have 
seen  that  the  hatred  felt  at  the  South  against 
the  Negro  was  like  the  hatred  once  felt  in  Cali 
fornia  against  the  Chinese  and  sprang  from  the 
same  poisonous  competitive  system  that  is  the 
origin  of  nine-tenths  of  the  ills  of  society. 
Colored  laborers  were  in  competition  with 
white  laborers ;  under  the  existing  system  all 
laborers  are  harassed  with  the  idea  that  there 
is  not  enough  work  for  all.  In  such  conditions 
every  dollar  earned  by  a  colored  man  was 
deemed  a  dollar  taken  from  a  white  man. 


Ill 

Therefore  the  white  laborer,  imbued  with  the 
belief,  surviving  from  slavery  days,  that  he  was 
the  higher  intelligence  and  of  the  greater  de 
serving,  was  determined  to  abolish  that  com 
petition  and  keep  the  colored  man  "  in  his 
place,"  which  according  to  these  authorities  is 
either  to  be  an  uncomplaining1  and  hopeless 
drudge  for  white  men  or  else  to  lie  in  the  grave, 
I  never  could  quite  make  out  which. 

Wendell  Phillips  would  have  perceived,  too, 
the  cowardice  of  the  persons  that  understand 
well  enough  the  perils  of  these  conditions  and 
fear  to  speak  of  them,  pushing  all  aside  with 
the  hollow  pretense  that  "  the  question  ought 
to  be  left  to  the  South,  which  best  understands 
the  Negro."  He  would  have  scorned  the  men 
that  sit  in  the  United  States  Senate  and  see 
this  monstrous  system  of  injustice  carried  to 
its  limits  and  utter  no  word  of  protest.  He 
would  have  perceived  the  fraudulent  nature  of 
the  argument  that  the  Negro  is  incapable  of 
anything  better  than  a  menial's  position  in 
life.  He  would  know  the  great  truth  and  in 
sist  upon  it  that  the  color  of  a  man's  skin  has 
nothing  to  do  with  either  his  character  or  his 
abilities;  that  there  is  no  such  thing  in  all  this 
world  as  a  racial  difference  great  enough  to 
take  cognizance  of;  that  men  are  everywhere 


THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

about  the  same ;  that  all  so-called  "  races  "  if 
endowed  with  about  the  same  opportunities  will 
make  about  the  same  progress ;  that  progress 
is  a  matter  of  opportunity  and  liberty,  not  of 
complexion.  He  would  have  seen,  too,  how 
hypocritical  is  the  assertion  that  the  Negro 
in  America  is  centuries  behind  the  white  man, 
for  he  knew  that  the  moment  the  Negro  secured 
an  equal  opportunity  with  the  white  man  the 
Negro's  achievements  were  at  least  as  great. 

All  these  things  he  felt  not  merely  because 
he  believed  in  democracy  and  equality  as  the 
basic  creed  of  his  religion  but  because  he  was 
accustomed  to  disregard  hysteria  and  conven 
tional  clamor  and  to  learn  for  himself  the  truth. 
Science  in  our  day  has  shattered  the  last  pre 
tense  that  there  is  any  such  thing  in  this  world 
as  a  separate  race,  establishing  as  a  scientific 
fact  the  universal  brotherhood  that  Christ 
taught.  Phillips,  in  advance  of  his  time,  saw 
this  when  even  other  Abolitionists  were  be 
fogged  about  the  "  sons  of  Ham  "  and  other 
nonsense.  He,  therefore,  was  the  one  man  of 
his  day  able  to  recite  properly  the  wonderful 
story  of  Toussaint  POuverture,  that  man  of 
unmixed  African  descent  whose  genius  as  a 
military  commander,  statesman  and  law-giver 
compelled  the  admiration  of  all  Europe  and  re- 


113 

mains  conspicuous  among  a  thousand  other 
illustrations  that  disprove  the  inferiority  of 
the  Negro  or  of  any  other  race.  Through  this 
marvelous  appreciation  of  one  of  the  greatest 
men  that  ever  lived  shines  this  prophetic  belief 
in  the  day  to  be  when  the  world  will  see  that  all 
men  are  what  environment,  opportunity,  lib 
erty  or  bondage,  poverty  or  sufficiency,  has 
made  them. 


VII 

THE  MAN  UNAFRAID  ENLISTS  FOR 
LABOR 

THE  war  was  over;  the  once  hated 
Abolitionists  became  the  idols  of  the  na 
tion;  men  saw  now  that  through  all  the  thirty 
years  of  preparatory  agitation,  the  cause  sup 
ported  by  a  fugitive  handful  had  been,  in  fact, 
an  eternal  verity ;  the  name,  once  a  badge  of 
shame,  became  a  sign  of  honor. 

In  this  great  but  quite  natural  transforma 
tion,  Mr.  Phillips  was  for  a  few  months,  the 
most  conspicuous  figure ;  even  with  the  war 
heroes  he  divided  the  popular  acclaim.  The 
man  that  had  been  everywhere  discredited  as 
a  liar  and  a  fomentor  of  dissension  attained 
of  a  sudden  to  a  degree  of  respectability  that 
would  have  unsettled  one  of  smaller  faith.  In 
1865  and  1866  his  audience  and  following  were 
beyond  those  of  any  other  man  in  the  country. 
Whatever  he  said  was  repeated  and  accepted ; 

he  was  overwhelmed  with  invitations  to  speak; 
114 


MAN    UNAFRAID    ENLISTS    FOR    LABOR         115 

on  platforms,  where,  a  few  years  before,  his 
life  had  been  in  peril  of  murderous  mobs,  he 
spoke  now  to  applauding  thousands.  For  a 
time  he  was  the  incomparable  favorite  in  the 
lecture  courses ;  he  was  offered  twenty  times  the 
engagements  he  could  fill. 

Before  so  great  a  popularity  the  doors  of 
political  preferment  swung  open.  What  office 
did  he  wish?  Any  place  was  at  his  choice. 
Would  he  go  to  Congress?  Would  he  be 
Governor?  Nominations  were  thrust  before 
him  wrhere  nomination  meant  election  and  elec 
tion  meant  a  long  career  in  the  public  service. 

We  know  now  that  at  least  one  of  these  op 
portunities  had  for  him  a  strong  allurement. 
The  Senate  was  very  attractive  to  him ;  he  liked 
its  dignity  and  its  opportunity  to  affect  na 
tional  policies.  Yet,  without  hesitation,  he  put 
from  him  every  temptation  from  the  one  path 
he  had  chosen  for  his  feet,  knowing  well  the  ar 
duous  nature  of  the  work  ahead  and  looking 
forward  to  the  time,  when,  because  of  that  work, 
he  should  once  more  be  hated. 

It  was,  in  fact,  the  second  great  turning 
point  ,in  his  career;  the  most  important  chap 
ter  was  just  beginning.  As  no  man  ever  does 
anything  for  but  one  reason,  so,  I  suppose,  in 
spiration  itself  is  not  single  and  indivisible. 


116         THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

To  his  great  services  and  sacrifices  in  the  anti- 
slavery  cause,  Mr.  Phillips  was  first  impelled 
by  his  fervent  faith  in  democracy,  his  sense  of 
justice  and  his  human  sympathies.  But  after 
a  time  he  saw  in  it  something  else,  whereof  the 
vision  was  not  possessed  by  his  fellows,  and  it 
was  this  broader  view  that  presently  wrought 
his  downfall  as  the  idol  of  the  hour. 

While  his  popularity  and  prestige  endured 
he  used  all  on  the  side  of  the  Negro.  From  the 
war  struggle  the  nation  passed  to  the  recon 
struction  struggle;  a  story  not  exhilarating  to 
the  patriot  that  reads  of  it.  To  preserve  for 
the  Negro  in  peace  what  had  been  won  for  him 
in  war  demanded  no  less  skill,  determination  and 
steady  fighting. 

Andrew  Johnson,  the  friend  of  the  former 
slave-holders,  was  now  President  and  under  his 
protection  and  encouragement  the  old  slave 
oligarchy  hoped  to  rise  again.  This  is  a  fact 
commonly  obscured  or  omitted  in  history,  and 
yet  the  record  of  it  is  indubitable.  Johnson 
was  at  heart  a  pro-slavery  man  and  always  had 
been.  He  had  been  chosen  by  Lincoln  for  the 
nomination  for  vice-president,  and  the  country 
was  now  reaping  a  bitter  harvest  for  that  blun 
der.  Johnson  came  from  Tennessee,  where  he 
was  one  of  those  extremely  doubtful  persons,  a 


MAN    UNAFRAID    ENLISTS    FOR    LABOR         117 

"  favorite  son."  Anybody  that  knew  anything 
about  him  knew  that  he  was  unfitted  to  be  thrust 
into  the  second  place  in  the  government,  but 
Lincoln  was  determined  to  have  him  there  be 
cause  of  his  supposed  influence  in  the  "  border 
states  "  about  which  was  much  concern  in  the 
minds  of  the  politicians.  The  fact  that  he 
had  no  convictions  against  slavery  naturally 
weighed  but  little  in  the  mind  of  Lincoln,  whose 
environment  and  training  had  been  such  as 
largely  to  obscure  this  point. 

When  Johnson  took  office  his  first  idea  was 
to  bring  back  the  revolted  states  on  the  same 
basis  on  which  they  had  existed  in  the  Union 
previous  to  secession.  The  late  slave-holders 
joyfully  accepted  this  proposition  and  began 
to  pass  laws  that  virtually  re-established  slav 
ery  and  would  return  the  country  to  the  con 
dition  it  was  in  before  the  war.  To  prevent  a 
catastrophe  so  tremendous  called  for  the  best 
leadership  of  the  North,  and  the  man  that  did 
most  to  preserve  the  hard-won  fruits  of  liberty 
was  Thaddeus  Stevens  of  Pennsylvania,  now 
almost  forgotten  except  by  those  that  care  for 
history  as  it  really  is  and  not  as  it  is  pretended. 

Stevens,  Phillips  and  Charles  Sumner,  and 
after  them  Ben  Wade,  Henry  Wilson  and 
Schuyler  Colfax,  were  the  leaders  of  the  ele- 


118         THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

ment  that  insisted  upon  enfranchisement  and 
equal  rights  regardless  of  color.  Nothing 
short  of  complete  democracy  would  content  the 
man  to  whom  democracy  was  a  religion.  The 
opposition  was  led  by  President  Johnson,  who 
became  the  center  of  fierce  dissension  in  the 
party  that  had  elected  him,  and  the  target  of 
some  of  Phillips's  most  bitter  and  acrid  sar 
casm. 

The  Thirteenth,  Fourteenth  and  Fifteenth 
amendments  to  the  Constitution  establishing 
equal  rights  represented  the  victory  of  the  rad 
ical  element  after  years  of  controversy. 

At  the  outset  Phillips  had  come  to  the  part 
ing  of  the  ways  with  Garrison.  The  end  of 
the  war  showed  an  irreconsilablc  difference  be 
tween  them.  Garrison  held  that  the  work  of 
the  Abolitionists  had  ended ;  Phillips  said  it  had 
just  begun.  Garrison  wished  to  disband  the 
American  Anti-Slavery  Society;  Phillips  in 
sisted  that  its  functions  were  never  greater  nor 
more  important.  At  the  annual  meeting  in 
1865  the  clash  came.  Garrison  moved  to  dis 
band;  Phillips  strongly  opposed  the  motion. 
On  the  vote  Phillips  had  a  large  majority  and 
Garrison  practically  withdrew  from  the  move 
ment.  Thereafter,  the  chief  burden,  including 
the  support  of  the  Standard,  the  society's  or- 


MAN    UNAFRAID    ENLISTS    FOR    LABOR        119 

gan,    fell    upon    the    shoulders    and    purse    of 
Phillips. 

The  two  men  never  lost  their  respect  for  each 
other,  but  their  temperamental  differences  were 
so  strong  that  probably  only  the  great  bond 
of  their  mutual  affection  had  previously  kept 
them  together.  Garrison  was  a  humanitarian, 
Phillips  a  militant  democrat.  Besides,  Garri 
son  was  the  elder  and  had  suffered  the  more 
from  the  terrible  strain  of  thirty-five  years  of 
fighting;  his  nature  was  to  seek  peace  and  pur 
sue  it.  He  was,  in  fact,  one  of  gentle  and  stu 
dent-like  inclinings,  driven  into  battle  by  the 
sheer  fervor  of  an  overmastering  faith.  One 
may  surmise  that  with  infinite  relief  he  hailed 
the  end  of  strife.  We  are  also  to  consider  that 
the  intensity  of  his  feeling  against  slavery  had 
not  only  worn  him  down,  but  at  the  same  time 
had  circumscribed  his  view ;  for  such  is  commonly 
the  effect  of  a  cause  upon  its  pioneers  and  those 
whom  it  exclusively  possesses. 

With  Phillips  the  case  was  very  different,  and 
here  we  return  upon  that  one  thing  that  he  saw 
and  the  others  failed  to  see.  He  had  long  un 
derstood  that  the  foundations  of  the  slavery 
question  were  much  broader  than  the  surface  in 
dications,  for  he  alone  of  the  Abolitionist  lead 
ers  saw  the  economic  origin  of  the  issue.  To 


120        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

his  mind,  the  slavery  question  was  a  labor  ques 
tion,  and  it  was  but  one  part  of  a  still  greater 
labor  question  that  must  be  settled  if  society 
was  to  endure.  He  alone  perceived  that  the 
abolition  of  African  slavery  was  only  one 
gained  battle  in  a  long  warfare ;  he  wanted  to 
go  on  with  the  rest.  Wage  slavery  was  as  truly 
slavery  as  chattel  slavery  and  as  much  a  thing 
to  be  abolished.  Nevertheless,  there  was  this 
difference,  that,  whereas  chattel  slavery  was 
confined  to  a  few  regions  in  a  few  countries, 
wage  slavery  was  universal ;  and  while  chattel 
slavery  involved  some  millions,  wage  slavery  in 
volved  and  degraded  the  entire  working  class 
of  the  world. 

In  other  words  he  had  been  thinking  along 
economic  lines  and  obtaining  economic  enlight 
enment;  an  achievement  that  alone  would  dis 
tinguish  him  as  far  in  advance  of  his  times. 

He  looked  out  upon  the  world  and  saw  that 
everywhere  the  toilers,  who  were  the  sole  crea 
tors  of  wealth,  were  the  bottom  of  the  social 
structure.  They  created  wealth  for  other  men 
to  enjoy,  but  of  the  wealth  they  created  they 
obtained  very  little  for  themselves.  In  conse 
quence  of  this  arrangement,  steadily  becom 
ing  more  oppressive  to  them,  they  lived  in  in 
sufficiency  and  under  conditions  that  made 


MAN    UNAFRAID    ENLISTS    FOR    LABOR 

health,  intelligence  and  progress  impossible 
among  them.  He  saw  that  the  population 
thus  injuriously  affected  was  in  every  country 
the  majority;  that  as  their  economic  condi 
tion  declined,  the  national  vigor  would  be  low 
ered  ;  that  the  chattel  slavery  against  which 
the  Abolitionists  warred  was  only  one  result 
of  a  system  that  less  frankly  enslaved  work 
ing  men  everywhere.  This  was  the  system  the 
Abolitionists  really  attacked  when  they  made 
war  on  chattel  slavery,  and  against  this  sys 
tem  he  was  resolved  to  continue  to  fight. 

He  had  also  in  another  way  a  clear  view  of 
things  as  they  were  in  his  time,  and  as  they 
were  to  be  after  him.  Nothing  about  this  re 
markable  man  was  more  wonderful  than  his  pre 
vision,  in  which  he  far  surpassed  any  other  man 
that  my  reading  has  encountered.  We  think  it 
an  achievement  that  Napoleon  should  have  pre 
dicted  the  fate  of  Great  Britain  in  South  Africa 
and  our  naval  war  of  1812,  but  these  seem 
small  feats  of  prophecy  compared  with  some 
that  are  recorded  of  Phillips.  With  substan 
tial  accuracy  and  equal  facility  he  could  fore 
tell  the  course  of  any  political  movement  or  eco 
nomic  development,  predict  the  path  of  national 
evolution  or  prophesy  about  inventions.  He 
foretold  wireless  telegraphy  and  aviation  with 


THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

as  much  certainty  as  the  outcome  of  the  Civil 
War  or  the  ruin  of  President  Johnson.  In  the 
midst  of  the  anxious  battle  against  African 
slavery,  he  foresaw  the  steady  arising  of  the 
far  greater  struggle  in  behalf  of  all  labor,  and 
at  the  same  time,  the  developing  threat  of  the 
money  power,  the  growth  of  the  lawless  great 
corporation  and  the  approach  of  their  control 
of  the  Government. 

So  with  the  same  courage  that  he  had  shown 
when  in  1837  he  took  his  place  with  the  hated 
Abolitionists,  and  in  the  same  spirit  of  unselfish 
consecration  to  a  great  cause,  he  committed 
himself  to  the  agitation  for  justice  to  labor,  then 
beginning  in  a  despised  way  to  make  itself 
faintly  heard.  It  was,  in  a  sense,  a  more  des 
perate  step  than  the  other,  since  in  the  common 
view  of  the  bourgeoisie,  if  the  Abolitionists  had 
been  mad  fanatics  the  labor  agitators  were  the 
lowest  dregs  of  humanity.  But  so  early  as  No 
vember  2,  1865,  Phillips  took  his  way  to  a  labor 
meeting  in  Faneuil  Hall  and  made  a  speech  in 
which  he  unequivocally  declared  himself  in  the 
first  notable  utterance  in  this  country  in  favor 
of  an  eight-hour  day.  He  said : 

It  is  twenty-nine  years  this  month  since  I  first 
stood  on  the  platform  of  Faneuil  Hall  to  address 
an  audience  of  the  citizens  of  Boston.  I  felt  then 


MAN    UNAFRAID    ENLISTS    FOR    LABOR 

that  I  was  speaking  for  the  cause  of  the  laboring 
men,  and  if  to-night  I  should  make  the  last  speech 
of  my  life,  I  would  be  glad  that  it  should  be  in 
the  same  strain, —  for  laboring  men  and  their 
rights. 

The  labor  of  these  twenty-nine  years  has  been 
in  behalf  of  a  race  bought  and  sold.  The  South 
did  not  rest  its  system  wholly  on  this  claim  to  own 
its  laborers;  but  according  to  Chancellor  Harper, 
Alexander  H.  Stevens,  Governor  Pickens  and  John 
C.  Calhoun,  asserted  that  the  laborer  must  neces 
sarily  be  owned  by  capitalists  or  individuals.  That 
struggle  for  the  ownership  of  labor  is  now  some 
where  near  its  end;  and  we  fitly  commence  a 
struggle  to  define  and  to  arrange  the  true  rela 
tions  of  capital  and  labor. 

To-day  one  of  your  sons  is  born.  He  lies  in 
his  cradle  as  the  child  of  a  man  without  means, 
with  a  little  education  and  with  less  leisure.  The 
favored  child  of  the  capitalist  is  borne  up  by  every 
circumstance  as  on  the  eagle's  wings.  The  prob 
lem  of  to-day  is  how  to  make  the  chances  of  the 
two  as  equal  as  possible;  and  before  this  movement 
stops,  every  child  born  in  America  must  have  an 
equal  chance  in  life. 

Eight  hours  for  labor,  eight  hours  for  sleep, 
eight  hours  to  be  the  worker's  own,  was  Mr. 
Phillips's  view  of  the  next  great  reform.  I 
have  no  idea  why  America  is  so  backward  about 
these  things.  The  eight-hour  movement,  so 
very  young  then  in  the  United  States,  was  old 
elsewhere.  In  front  of  the  Parliament  House 
at  Melbourne,  Australia,  you  will  find  a  hand- 


THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

some  monument  to  commemorate  the  adoption 
by  Australia  of  this  humane  proposal.  That 
monument  had  become  a  familiar  sight  to  Mel 
bourne,  long  before  the  eight-hour  principle  was 
widely  recognized  in  the  United  States,  a  fact 
that  may  afford  us  another  measure  of  Mr.  Phil- 
lips's  far  advance  upon  his  contemporaries. 

"  You  must  imitate  the  tenacity  of  the  Aboli 
tionists  in  adherence  to  a  single  issue,"  he  went 
on.  "  A  political  movement  saying,  '  We  will 
have  our  rights '  is  a  mass  meeting  in  perpetual 
session.  Filtered  through  the  ballot  box  comes 
the  will  of  the  people  and  statesmen  bow  to  it. 
Go  home  and  say  that  the  working  men  of  Mas 
sachusetts  are  a  unit  and  that  they  mean  to 
stereotype  their  purposes  on  the  statute-book." 

Such  words  fell  like  a  cold  douche  upon  thou 
sands  of  men  more  than  willing  to  make  Phillips 
their  hero.  At  first  some  of  these  tried  to  ex 
cuse  the  eccentricity  by  assuming  that  Phillips 
had  now  in  mind  a  career  in  politics,  and  re 
membering  that  to  flatter  the  groundlings  was 
always  permissible  or  even  laudable  in  one  cher 
ishing  such  an  ambition.  The  groundlings  had 
votes  and  it  was  practical  politics  to  make 
promises  to  them  and  fool  them  to  the  top  of 
their  bent.  All  candidates  did  so ;  it  was  part 
of  the  game;  but  of  course  one  was  not  obliged 


MAN    UNAFRAID    ENLISTS    FOR    LABOR         125 

to  remember  such  promises  when  one  got  into 
office. 

But  when  Mr.  Phillips  calmly  put  aside  every 
proffer  of  office  and  went  his  way  insisting  upon 
the  issues  he  deemed  important,  caring  not  the 
least  for  popularity,  his  recent  adherents  fell 
rapidly  away.  For  some  reason  not  easy  to 
understand  in  a  democracy,  any  recognition  of 
the  essential  rights  of  labor  has  always  been 
particularly  offensive  to  a  certain  part  of  the 
American  public.  In  a  few  years,  Phillips,  for 
the  sake  of  his  position  on  labor,  and  for  no 
other  reason,  was  back  again  in  his  old  situa 
tion  ;  he  was  facing  hatred  and  incessant  attack 
in  front,  while  behind  him  was  a  thin  rank  of 
half-hearted  support. 

In  at  least  one  aspect  of  his  development  the 
philosophical  might  find  abundant  subject  for 
reflection.  In  plain  speech,  it  was  the  old  as 
sailant  under  a  new  name;  thereby  abundantly 
illustrating  the  fact  that  names  change  and  the 
forms  of  issues,  but  at  heart  the  contest  remains 
from  generation  to  generation  about  the  same. 
When,  before  the  war,  he  denounced  chattel 
slavery,  he  was  assailed  by  the  slaveholding  In 
terests  of  the  South;  when,  after  the  war,  he 
threatened  wage-slavery,  he  was  assailed  by  the 
financial  and  manufacturing  Interests  of  the 


126        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

North.  In  both  instances,  the  impulse  of  the 
hatred  that  descended  upon  him  was  identical. 
He  threatened  somebody's  profits  by  threaten 
ing  an  existing  system  that  bulwarked  those 
profits.  That  is  all,  and  that  is  the  reason  why 
Southern  fire-eaters  offered  a  price  for  his  head ; 
why  mobs  came  with  ropes  to  hang  him ;  why  a 
score  of  times  he  narrowly  escaped  with  his  life. 
Similarly,  that  alone  was  the  reason  why,  at 
this  place  in  his  story,  he  became  to  a  certain 
class  the  worst  hated  man  in  the  United  States. 
The  frank  Southerner  of  the  slave-owning  In 
terests  desired  to  have  him  killed ;  the  colder 
Northerner  of  other  Interests  ostracised  him 
while  he  lived  and  exulted  when  he  died.  The 
difference  does  not  seem  remarkable.  If  the 
feeling  of  the  Southern  Interests  seems  to  have 
been  the  more  intense,  we  are  to  remember  that 
the  imperiled  profits  of  the  Southern  Interests 
were  correspondingly  the  greater. 

Yet,  the  man  that  was  thus  hated  with  such 
an  excess  of  passion  was  not  one  that  in  him 
self  would  win  anything  but  applause  from  the 
honest  and  sincere.  In  his  private  walk  he  was 
kindly,  generous,  sympathetic  and  reasonable. 
The  Southerners  were  long  taught  to  regard 
him  as  their  worst  enemy ;  he  was,  in  fact,  their 
best  friend,  striving  to  remove  from  them  and 


MAN    UNAFRAID    ENLISTS    FOR    LABOR 

from  the  country  the  evil  that  made  us  a  scan 
dal  among  nations  and  infinitely  retarded  the 
progress  of  the  South.  He  never  made  the 
error  of  confounding  men  with  the  conditions 
that  impel  them  to  objectionable  action.  What 
he  desired  was  to  change  the  conditions. 

He  kept  his  purse  drained  for  private  char 
ity  and  in  behalf  of  the  causes  that  he  sup 
ported,  filling  it  with  proceeds  from  his  lectures 
and  emptying  it  again.  No  applicant  for  re 
lief  departed  from  him  without  assistance* 
After  his  death  there  came  to  light  a  thousand 
instances  of  his  unostentatious  generosity.  A 
Southern  woman  whose  family  had  been  ruined 
by  the  war,  was  living  in  Boston  by  precarious 
returns  from  lectures.  One  morning  Phillips 
was  returning  from  a  Massachusetts  town 
where  he  had  lectured  the  night  before,  and 
found  this  lady  on  the  same  train.  He  invited 
her  to  a  seat  beside  him  and  led  her  to  reveal 
to  him  something  of  her  troubles.  He  inquired 
how  much  she  received  for  each  lecture. 

"  Five  dollars,"  said  she,  "  and  I  am  glad  to 
get  that." 

"  It  is  not  enough,"  said  Mr.  Phillips.  "  I 
get  $100  or  $200  and  I  give  only  opinions  while 
you  give  information.  You  must  allow  me  to 
divide  my  fee  with  you,"  and  he  finally  per- 


128         THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

suaded  her  to  let  him  put  into  her  purse  a  roll 
of  bills.  When  she  arrived  at  home  and  exam 
ined  the  money  she  found  that  it  was  one  hun 
dred  dollars. 

This  lady  is  said  to  have  been  a  niece  of  Jef 
ferson  Davis.  Ten  years  before  she  would 
probably  have  heard  with  pleasure  that  Wen 
dell  Phillips,  the  damned  Abolitionist,  had  been 
lynched,  because  he  was  trying  to  interfere  with 
the  profits  of  the  slave-owners.  In  the  car 
with  her  that  morning  rode  men  that  scowled 
with  no  less  hatred  upon  Wendell  Phillips,  the 
damned  labor  agitator,  because  he  was  trying 
to  interfere  with  the  profits  of  the  labor  ex 
ploiters.  It  would  puzzle  the  ordinary  mind  to 
detect  the  essential  difference. 

Mr.  Everett  O.  Foss,  a  prominent  citizen 
of  Dover,  New  Hampshire,  supplies  me  with 
this  anecdote,  not  before  printed. 

Mr.  Foss  was  an  ardent  admirer  of  Phil 
lips  and  undertook,  on  his  own  responsibility, 
when  he  was  a  very  young  man,  to  have  his  idol 
deliver  a  lecture  in  Dover.  The  town  was 
deluged  with  a  terrific  storm  that  night  and 
only  one  person  appeared  at  the  hall.  Instead 
of  lecturing,  Mr.  Phillips  invited  Mr.  Foss 
across  the  street  to  the  old  American  House, 
where  he  ordered  a  pot  of  tea,  his  favorite  bev- 


MAN    UNAFRAID    ENLISTS    FOR    LABOR        129 

erage,  and  sat  and  talked  until  late  into  the 
night.  It  was  a  wonderful  strain  of  speech 
that  Mr.  Foss  was  privileged  to  hear;  Phil 
lips  seemed  to  have  read  everything  and  to 
have  been  everywhere,  and  he  went  lightly  over 
and  through  all  the  topics  of  the  day,  illumin 
ating  each  with  a  wealth  of  illustrations,  facts, 
epigrams,  views,  stories  and  quotations,  such 
as  probably  no  other  man  then  alive  could  have 
given. 

Later  Mr.  Foss  induced  Phillips  to  return 
to  Dover  and  again  attempt  a  lecture.  For 
some  reason  it  was  poorly  attended,  but  Mr. 
Phillips  spoke  with  his  accustomed  force  and 
brilliancy,  for  the  size  of  his  audience  never 
made  any  difference  to  him.  After  he  had 
made  an  end,  he  and  Foss  once  more  adjourned 
to  the  hotel  and  tea. 

"Mr.  Foss,"  said  Phillips,  suddenly,  "how 
much  have  you  lost  on  this  lecture  engage 
ment?" 

Mr.  Foss  tried  to  evade  the  subject,  but 
Phillips  persisted  until  the  young  man  named 
the  approximate  amount. 

"  You  must  let  me  share  it,"  said  Phillips, 
and  produced  bills  to  half  the  amount,  which 
he  insisted,  and  would  not  be  denied,  that  Mr. 
Foss  should  accept.  They  drank  their  tea 


130        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

and  talked  for  a  time  and  then  Phillips  said 
suddenly : 

"  Mr.  Foss,  do  you  know,  I  have  a  partner 
in  this  business  and  one  that  holds  me  to  a  very 
strict  account  for  everything  I  do?  It  is  my 
wife.  Now  she  will  want  to  know  all  about  this 
affair  and  she  will  not  like  it.  I  don't  dare  to 
go  home  and  tell  her  of  it  as  the  case  now 
stands.  I  shall  have  to  make  a  little  change 
in  our  arrangements  in  order  to  satisfy  her. 
I  shall  have  to  ask  you  to  take  the  rest  of  this 
money,  or  I  shall  never  be  able  to  make  my 
partner  think  that  I  have  done  right."  Nor 
would  he  desist  until  Mr.  Foss  had  accepted 
the  proffer. 

Managers  of  lyceum  courses  can  relate  of 
other  famous  lecturers  anecdotes  of  quite  a 
different  flavor. 


VIII 
PHILLIPS  THE  SOCIALIST 

To  Mr.  Phillips,  after  the  war  closed,  the 
work  before  him  seemed  perfectly  clear.  All 
that  had  been  gained  was  no  more  than  a  be 
ginning.  Part  of  a  great  evil  had  been  abol 
ished;  the  achievement  merely  revealed  the 
greater  task.  Others  might  be  willing  to  sit 
with  folded  hands ;  he  fought  right  on.  He 
saw  about  him  a  nation  cursed  with  poverty  in 
the  midst  of  abounding  wealth ;  afflicted  with 
intemperance,  the  product  of  poverty ;  afflicted 
with  a  foolish,  medieval  superstition  that  ex 
cluded  women  from  the  ballot ;  denying  educa 
tion  and  opportunity  to  the  greater  part  of  its 
children.  At  the  same  time  its  toilers  were  over 
worked  and  underfed,  its  free  institutions  were 
threatened  by  an  abnormal  aggregation  of 
riches  in  the  hands  of  a  few,  and  the  process 
steadily  developed  under  which  the  rich  must 
grow  richer  and  the  poor  poorer.  Here,  it 

seemed  to  him,  lay  a  great  field,  demanding  the 
131 


132        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL,    PHILLIPS 

ceaseless  labors  of  any  man  that  believed  in 
democracy  and  the  rise  of  the  race. 

Turning  over  the  records  of  these  ten  or 
twelve  years,  his  activities  seem  prodigious. 
He  carried  on  the  Standard,  fought  with  al 
most  savage  pertinacity  for  the  rights  of  the 
Negro  and. against  the  policies  of  the  Johnson 
administration,  argued  for  the  cause  of  Ireland 
against  England,  the  cause  of  Crete  against 
Turkey,  the  cause  of  the  Indians  against  the 
United  States,  for  woman  suffrage,  for  the 
outcasts  of  the  street,  and  in  and  out  of  sea 
son  for  the  cause  of  labor.  To  all  this  there 
is  no  companion  record,  for  he  had  nothing  to 
gain  from  all  this  campaigning;  not  even  ap 
plause. 

Enlightenment  seems  to  be  an  order  of 
mind ;  if  a  man  dwells  in  a  cave  about  one  ques 
tion  you  can  usually  find  him  feudal  on  every 
thing  else  that  pertains  to  human  progress.  If 
he  hates  the  "  nigger  "  he  rejects  woman  suf 
frage;  if  he  objects  to  free  speech  he  believes 
that  you  can  lower  the  cost  of  living  by  putting 
slippery  elm  on  the  free  list.  Conversely,  I 
have  seldom  found  a  man  that  believed  in 
woman  suffrage  that  was  not  also  an  opponent 
of  war,  capital  punishment  and  the  ethics  of 
the  jungle.  All  his  days  Mr.  Phillips  was  a 


PHILLIPS    THE    SOCIALIST 

fervent  antagonist  of  the  barbarism  of  capital 
punishment  and  to  agitate  against  it  on  every 
suitable  occasion  was  one  of  the  labors  of  these 
busy  days.  So  far  back  as  1855  in  an  elab 
orate  argument  on  this  topic  he  said : 

The  harvest  of  the  gallows  is  reaped  from  the 
poor,  the  ignorant,  the  friendless  —  the  men  who, 
in  the  touching  language  of  Charles  Lamb,  are 
"  never  brought  up,  but  dragged  up  " ;  who  never 
knew  what  it  was  to  have  a  mother,  to  have  edu 
cation,  moral  restraint.  They  have  been  left  on 
the  highways,  vicious,  drunken,  neglected.  Society 
cast  them  off.  She  never  extended  over  them  a 
single  gentle  care;  but  the  first  time  this  crop 
of  human  passion,  the  growth  of  which  she  never 
checked,  manifests  itself  —  the  first  time  that  ill- 
regulated  being  puts  forth  his  hand  to  do  an  act 
of  violence,  society  puts  forth  her  hand  and  stran 
gles  him !  Has  society  done  her  duty  ?  Could 
the  intelligence,  the  moral  sense  and  the  religion 
of  Massachusetts  go  up  and  stand  by  the  side  of 
that  po.or  unfortunate  Negro,  who  was  the  last  man 
executed  in  this  Commonwealth,  and  say  that  they 
had  done  their  duty  by  him?  He  had  passed  his 
life  in  scenes  of  vice;  he  had  never  known  what 
it  was  to  have  a  human  being  speak  to  him  in  a 
tone  of  sympathy.  Had  society  done  her  duty? 
He  never  landed  in  our  city  but  the  harpies  of 
licentiousness  and  drink  beset  him,  and  the  churches 
never  rose  up  in  their  majesty  to  forbid  it. 
Steeped  to  the  lips  in  vice  for  thirty  years,  when 
society  found  him  guilty  of  an  act  of  violence,  the 
natural  result  of  such  a  life,  did  society  take  him 
and  say,  "  God  gave  this  man  to  me  an  innocent 


134?        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

soul,  and  I  have  let  him  grow  up  into  this  mon 
ster,  and  now  I  will  take  him  and  restrain  him; 
I  will  throw  around  him  moral  influences,  and  see 
if  I  cannot  make  a  human  being  of  him"?  Did 
society  retreat  to  the  wall?  Did  she  try  to  save 
that  man?  No;  she  inflicted  upon  him  the  se 
verest  punishment  —  she  took  away  his  life.  "  So 
ciety  is  an  instrument  of  good,"  said  one  of  your 
members  a  few  days  ago.  Then  she  is  bound  to 
educate  the  man  thrown  into  her  hands.  .  .  . 

If  you  can  come  down  one  step,  if  you  can  give 
up  the  rack  and  the  wheel,  impaling,  tearing  to 
death  with  wild  horses,  why  cannot  you  come  down 
two  and  adopt  imprisonment?  Why  cannot  you 
come  down  three,  and  instead  of  putting  the  man 
in  jail,  make  your  prisons,  as  Brougham  recom 
mends,  moral  hospitals,  and  educate  him?  Why 
cannot  you  come  down  four  and  put  him  under 
the  influence  of  some  community  of  individuals 
who  will  labor  to  waken  again  the  moral  feelings 
and  sympathies  of  his  nature? 

He  was  the  persistent,  tireless,  whole-hearted 
friend  of  Ireland  and  the  Irish  patriots,  de 
fending  them  with  the  full  force  of  his  eloquence 
against  the  slanders  of  Froude  and  others.  He 
watched  with  such  sympathy  as  Swinburne  and 
other  radicals  showed  the  struggle  of  Italy  to 
be  free,  and  when  at  last  that  was  accomplished 
he  wrote  this: 

At  all  times,  the  fate  of  Rome  has  been  of  ut 
most  interest.  Every  scholar,  every  lover  of  art, 
every  student  of  jurisprudence,  every  apostle  of 
liberty,  remembers  that,  after  leading  the  old 


PHILLIPS    THE    SOCIALIST  135 

world,  Rome  guarded  its  treasures  across  the  gulf 
of  the  middle  and  troubled  ages.  To  every  lover 
of  the  past  and  every  servant  of  the  future  it 
seems  natural  to  call  Italy  "  My  Country."  Three 
centuries  ago  she  inspired  modern  civilization.  In 
this  generation  the  battle  for  European  liberty  has 
centered  on  Rome.  At  last  she  opens  her  gates  to 
the  nineteenth  century. 

Congratulations  to  Garibaldi  and  Mazzini. 
They  behold  the  morning.  What  will  the  noon 
be?  Nothing  less  than  Europe  a  brotherhood  of 
republics. 

Kings,  like  other  spectres,  will  vanish  at  the 
cock-crowing. 

May  the  glory  and  service  of  Rome  in  this  new 
epoch  transcend  her  "  trebly  hundred  triumphs  " 
and  all  the  splendor  of  the  age  of  Leo. 

But  the  feature  of  Wendell  Phillips's  life  and 
faith  of  which  the  least  has  been  said  pertains 
to  his  convictions  about  economics. 

Few  persons  in  this  country  have  any  con 
ception  of  his  radical  views  about  finance,  co 
operation,  the  division  of  wealth,  trades  unions, 
and  other  problems  that  in  our  day  have  be 
come  acute,  nor  how  far  he  was  in  advance  of 
any  other  public  man  of  his  day.  He  was  the 
first  prominent  American  to  adopt  the  doctrine 
now  become  familiar  as  the  first  plank  in  the 
program  of  the  Socialist  party.  The  fact  has 
always  been  sedulously  concealed,  but  he  was 
a  Socialist,  neither  more  nor  less.  He  was  con- 


136        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

vinced  of  the  essential  truth  of  the  Socialist 
philosophy,  and  being  so  convinced,  note  next 
how  he  stood  by  the  faith. 

In  1871,  he  was  instrumental  in  bringing 
about  a  Labor  Reform  Convention  held  at 
Worcester,  Massachusetts.  He  was  its  chair 
man  and  wrote  its  platform,  which  was  unani 
mously  adopted.  The  very  first  sentence 
contains  the  substance  of  the  modern  Socialistic 
creed : 

We  affirm,  as  a  fundamental  principle,  that  la 
bor,  the  creator  of  wealth,  is  entitled  to  all  it 
creates. 

I  do  not  know  how  there  could  be  a  more  ex 
plicit  declaration.  But  listen  to  what  follows: 

Affirming  this,  we  avow  ourselves  willing  to  ac 
cept  the  final  results  of  the  operation  of  a  prin 
ciple  so  radical  —  such  as  the  overthrow  of  the 
whole  profit-making  system,  the  extinction  of  all 
monopolies,  the  abolition  of  privileged  classes,  uni 
versal  education  and  fraternity,  perfect  freedom 
of  exchange,  and  best  and  grandest  of  all,  the 
final  obliteration  of  that  foul  stigma  upon  our  so- 
called  Christian  civilization,  the  poverty  of  the 
masses. 

All  this  in  1871  —  think  of  it!  The  Social 
ist  platform  makers  of  to-day  have  hardly  gone 
beyond  most  of  it. 


PHILLIPS    THE    SOCIALIST  137 


Resolved,  that  we  declare  war  with  the  wages 
system,  which  demoralizes  alike  the  hirer  and  the 
hired,  cheats  both  and  enslaves  the  working  man 
war  with  the  present  system  of  finance,  which  robs 
labor  and  gorges  capital,  makes  the  rich  richer 
and  the  poor  poorer  and  turns  a  republic  into  an 
aristocracy  of  capital;  war  with  these  lavish  grants 
of  the  public  lands  to  speculating  companies,  and 
whenever  in  power,  we  pledge  ourselves  to  use 
every  just  and  legal  means  to  resume  all  such 
grants  heretofore  made;  war  with  the  system  of 
enriching  capitalists  by  the  creation  and  increase 
of  public  interest-bearing  debts. 

We  demand  that  every  facility  and  all  encour 
agement  shall  be  given  by  law  to  co-operation  in 
all  branches  of  industry  and  trade,  and  that  the 
same  aid  be  given  to  co-operative  efforts  that  has 
heretofore  been  given  to  railroads  and  other  enter 
prises. 

At  that  time  the  employees  of  mills  and  fac 
tories  were  worked  twelve  and  sometimes  four 
teen  hours  a  day  and  few  persons  could  see 
anything  wrong  in  the  system.  On  this  sub 
ject  the  resolutions  of  Mr.  Phillips  declare: 

We  demand  a  ten-hour  day  for  factory  work,  as 
a  first  step,  and  that  eight  hours  be  the  working- 
day  of  all  persons  thus  employed  hereafter. 

He  even  recognized,  so  far  in  advance  of  his 
times,  the  principle  of  equal  pay  for  equal 
work. 


II 


138        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

We  demand  that  whenever  women  are  employed 
at  public  expense  to  do  the  same  kind  and  amount 
of  work  as  men  perform,  they  shall  receive  the 
same  wages. 

He  saw  clearly  that  interest-bearing  bonds 
are  a  bulwark  to  the  exploiting  classes.  In  the 
next  sentence  he  said: 

We  demand  that  all  public  debts  be  paid  at 
once  in  accordance  with  the  terms  of  the  contract, 
and  that  no  more  debts  be  created. 

And  he  foresaw  the  evils  of  contract  labor, 
for  almost  twenty  years  in  advance  of  legisla 
tion  on  this  subject  he  said  in  bis  platform: 

Viewing  the  contract  importation  of  coolies  as 
only  another  form  of  the  slave-trade,  we  demand 
that  all  contracts  made  relative  thereto  be  void  in 
this  country. 

When  he  presented  this  platform,  Mr.  Phil 
lips  said,  addressing  the  convention : 

I  regard  the  movement  with  which  this  conven 
tion  is  connected  as  the  grandest  and  most  com 
prehensive  movement  of  the  age.  And  I  choose 
my  epithets  deliberately;  for  I  can  hardly  name 
the  idea  in  which  humanity  is  interested  that  I 
do  not  consider  locked  up  in  the  success  of  this 
movement  of  the  people  to  take  possession  of  their 
own. 

In  the  forty  years  that  have  passed  since 
that  utterance,  there  has  not  appeared  a  better 


PHILLIPS    THE    SOCIALIST  139 

statement  of  the  nature  of  the  proletarian  in 
spiration. 

Renewed  clamor  broke  out  when  this  platform 
and  his  speech  thereon  appeared.  The  news 
papers  called  Phillips  a  nihilist  and  a  dangerous 
person;  they  had  not  yet  learned  the  word 
anarchist,  that  in  later  years  they  applied  in 
discriminately  to  every  man  that  protested 
against  existing  conditions.  From  this  time 
Mr.  Phillips's  reputation  steadily  declined. 
Many  persons  viewed  with  sorrow  the  sad  fail 
ure  of  the  promise  of  the  war  period.  He 
might  have  been  sensible  and  successful;  he 
might  have  gone  to  Congress  or  been  a  Senator 
or  a  judge.  Instead,  he  insisted  upon  casting 
in  his  lot  with  this  handful  of  rag-tag  and  bob 
tail.  And  who  were  they?  Nothing  but  com 
mon  working  men !  Sad  was  the  case,  and 
attention  was  once  more  directed  to  the  fact 
that  in  his  earlier  days  his  family  had  tried  to 
lock  him  up  in  an  insane  asylum  because  he 
attacked  African  slavery.  Perhaps  there  was 
something  in  that.  Certainly  any  man  that 
aligned  himself  with  a  lot  of  greasy  mechanics 
could  hardly  be  right  in  his  mind. 

In  the  previous  year  he  had  accepted  from 
the  Labor  and  Temperance  parties  a  nomina 
tion  for  Governor,  knowing,  of  course,  that  his 


140         THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

election  was  impossible,  but  seizing  the  oppor 
tunity  to  gain  audiences  for  his  two  favorite 
causes. 

In  his  letter,  dated  September  12,  1870,  ac 
cepting  the  nomination  of  the  Labor  Party  he 
said: 

Law  should  do  all  it  can  to  give  the  masses 
more  leisure,  a  more  complete  education,  better 
opportunities,  and  a  fair  share  of  profits.  It  is 
a  shame  to  our  Christianity  and  civilization  for 
our  social  system  to  provide  and  expect  that  one 
man  at  seventy  years  of  age  shall  be  lord  of  many 
thousands  of  dollars,  while  hundreds  of  other  men, 
who  have  made  as  good  use  of  their  talents  and 
opportunities,  lean  upon  charity  for  their  daily 
bread.  Of  course,  there  must  be  inequalities. 
But  the  best  minds  and  hearts  of  the  land  should 
give  themselves  to  the  work  of  changing  this  gross 
injustice,  this  appalling  inequality.  I  feel  sure 
that  the  readiest  way  to  turn  public  thought  and 
effort  into  this  channel,  is  for  the  workingmen  to 
organize  a  political  party.  No  social  question  ever 
gets  fearlessly  treated  here  till  we  make  politics 
turn  on  it.  The  real  American  college  is  the  bal 
lot-box.  On  questions  like  these,  a  political  party 
is  the  surest  and  readiest,  if  not  the  only,  way  to 
stir  discussion,  and  secure  improvement. 

•  If  my  name  will  strengthen  your  movement,  you 
are  welcome  to  it. 

Allow  me  to  add,  that,  though  we  work  for  a 
large  vote,  we  should  not  be  discouraged  by  a 
small  one. 

Your  truly, 

WENDELL  PHILLIPS. 


PHILLIPS    THE    SOCIALIST  141 

He  received  in  the  State  about  twenty  thou 
sand  votes. 

In  1871  he  intensified  the  feeling  against 
him  in  the  better  classes  by  giving  his  support 
to  General  Benjamin  F.  Butler,  who  was  mak 
ing  an  active  canvass  for  the  Governorship. 
This  incident  has  grievously  afflicted  his  courtly 
biographer,  who  has  adopted  the  current  ex 
planation  that  Phillips  supported  Butler  be 
cause  of  the  old  friendship  begun  at  Lowell 
when  both  were  youths.  All  his  life  Phillips 
had  sacrificed  his  personal  preference  to  his 
sense  of  duty,  and  his  friendships  and  even  his 
family  ties  to  his  convictions.  He  had  been 
bound  to  Garrison  by  tender  bonds  of  affec 
tion  and  admiration;  yet  even  from  Garrison 
he  had  parted  for  the  sake  of  principle.  He 
had  never  been  intimate  with  Butler;  the  two 
had  little  in  common;  yet  the  comical  explana 
tion  is  still  urged  that  some  excess  of  personal 
friendship  brought  him  to  Butler's  support. 

I  suppose  that  for  an  act  so  inexpressibly 
offensive  to  the  social  and  political  Brahmins 
of  Massachusetts  some  unusual  reason  was  de 
manded,  but  the  truth  is  that  Phillips  applied 
to  Butler  the  same  standard  he  applied  to  every 
other  public  man.  What  ideas  did  he  stand 
for?  For  justice  to  labor,  for  the  plain  people 


THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

and  for  the  cause  of  temperance.  That  was 
enough.  Phillips  supported  him. 

Butler  was  defeated  in  the  Republican  con 
vention,  but  we  are  to  hear  more  of  him  in  this 
story. 

Upon  every  possible  occasion  Mr.  Phillips 
continued  to  call  the  attention  of  his  country 
men  to  the  growing  peril  of  corporation  su 
premacy  in  their  affairs  and  to  the  demands  of 
labor.  Some  of  his  utterances  at  this  period, 
because  of  their  astonishingly  accurate  fore 
cast  of  coming  conditions  in  America,  are 
likely  to  startle  any  present  day  reader.  In 
vestigators  of  the  modern  situation  have  done 
nothing  more  than  to  verify  his  predictions. 
Thus  in  October,  1871,  he  said  this: 

The  land  of  England  [meaning  the  great  es 
tates]  has  ruled  it  for  six  hundred  years.  The 
corporations  of  America  mean  to  rule  it  in  the 
same  way,,  and  unless  some  power  more  radical 
than  that  of  ordinary  politics  is  found,  will  rule 
it  inevitably. 

I  confess  that  the  only  fear  I  have  in  regard  to 
republican  institutions  is  whether,  in  our  day,  any 
adequate  remedy  will  be  found  for  this  incoming 
flood  of  the  power  of  incorporated  wealth.  No 
statesman,  no  public  man  yet,  has  dared  to  defy 
it.  Every  man  that  has  met  it  has  been  crushed 
to  powder;  and  the  only  hope  of  any  effective 
grapple  with  it  is  in  rousing  the  actual  masses, 


PHILLIPS    THE    SOCIALIST 

whose  interests  permanently  lie  in  an  opposite  di 
rection,  to  grapple  with  this  force. 

And  again : 

To  me  the  Labor  movement  means  just  this: 
It  is  the  last  noble  protest  against  the  power  of 
incorporated  wealth,  seeking  to  do  again  what  the 
Whig  aristocracy  of  Great  Britain  has  successfully 
done  for  two  hundred  years.  Thirty  thousand 
families  own  Great  Britain  to-day. 

In  a  speech  delivered  in  April,  1872,  he  said : 

I  rejoice  at  every  effort  working  men  make  to 
organize;  I  do  not  care  on  what  basis  they  do 
it.  Men  sometimes  say  to  me:  "  Are  you  an 
Internationalist?  "  I  say,  I  do  not  know  what  an 
Internationalist  is;  but  they  tell  me  it  is  a  system 
by  wThich  the  working  men  from  London  to  Gibral 
tar,  from  Moscow  to  Paris,  can  clasp  hands.  Then 
I  say  "  Godspeed,  Godspeed,  to  that  or  any  simi 
lar  movements." 

So  I  welcome  organization.  I  do  not  care 
whether  it  calls  itself  Trades-Union,  Crispin,  In 
ternational  or  Commune;  anything  that  masses  up 
the  units  in  order  that  they  may  put  in  a  united 
force  to  face  the  organization  of  capital;  anything 
that  does  that,  I  say  amen  to  it. 

No  mincing  of  words.  Now,  as  in  the  Abo 
lition  days,  he  accepted  the  full  measure  of 
faith  and  stood  squarely  upon  that,  never 
flinching.  And  here  I  take  occasion  to  point 
out  another  of  his  traits,  well  worth  the  atten- 


THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

tion  of  a  nation  so  overfond  of  compromise. 
With  Wendell  Phillips  it  was  either  one  thing 
or  the  other ;  either  support  or  no  support.  If 
he  believed  in  a  cause,  he  stood  for  the  whole 
of  it  and  to  the  end.  He  would  waste  neither 
time  nor  effort  in  half-hearted  advocacy  of  any 
movement,  since  all  about  him  were  so  many 
conflicts  to  which  he  could  give  unreservedly  the 
limit  of  his  enthusiasm  and  strength. 

But  when  individual  public  men  were  to  be 
considered  he  had  a  different  feeling.  His 
idea  was  to  take  the  good  in  every  man  and 
make  the  most  of  it  but  never  to  acquiesce  in 
the  evil.  At  all  times  he  discountenanced  and 
despised  the  hysteria  of  hero  worship  that 
seems  to  possess  Americans  above  any  other 
people.  Because  a  President  had  done  one 
good  thing,  that  did  not  mean  that  he  was  a 
divinity.  Phillips  knew  men  well  enough  to 
know  that  the  differences  of  ability  and  intel 
lect  were  not  great  enough  to  warrant  canoni 
zation,  and  that  the  only  really  important  dif 
ferences  were  in  moral  purpose  and  in  service 
to  the  race.  His  attitude  toward  President 
Grant  was  typical.  He  praised  Grant  for  up 
holding  the  rights  of  the  colored  people  but 
condemned  his  treatment  of  Sumner  and  his 
policy  about  Santo  Domingo. 


PHILLIPS    THE    SOCIALIST  145 

One  more  instance  of  his  extraordinary  pow 
ers  occurring  in  these  days  ought  not  to  be 
omitted  from  this  chronicle.  It  was  in  1875. 
Grant,  with  the  aid  of  Federal  troops,  was 
trying  to  restore  order  in  Louisiana,  where 
former  Confederates  had  risen  against  a  Gov 
ernor  elected  by  enfranchised  colored  men. 
Southern  sympathizers  in  Boston  called  a  meet 
ing  at  Fanueil  Hall  to  denounce  Grant's  course 
in  this  regard.  Mr.  Phillips  attended,  sitting 
in  the  gallery,  and  with  no  intention  of  speak 
ing.  Men  on  the  floor  belotf,  noting  his  silent 
figure,  began  to  call  for  a  speech  from  him. 
He  sat  quite  still,  his  arm  resting  upon  his 
cane  and  his  chin  upon  his  arm  while  he  grimly 
watched  the  proceedings.  The  clamor  for  him 
becoming  so  great  that  the  meeting  could  not 
proceed,  the  chairman  was  obliged  to  invite  him 
to  speak.  He  slowly  arose  in  his  place  and  in 
a  profound  hush  began  an  address.  Then,  in 
the  old  place,  the  familiar  old  scene  was  reen- 
acted.  At  the  first  sentence  arose  hisses  and 
violent  outcries ;  then  ensued  a  gradually  dimin 
ishing  clamor ;  then  silence ;  then  applause ;  and 
the  meeting  that  had  been  called  to  denounce 
Grant  adopted  a  resolution  in  his  support. 

It  was  about  this  time  that  I  first  heard  him. 
He  was  lecturing  on  Charles  Sumner.  While 


146        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

a  local  celebrity  went  through  the  form  of  in 
troducing  him,  he  sat  on  a  sofa  at  the  back  of 
the  stage  and  looked  upon  us  in  a  way  that 
spoke  at  once  extreme  kindness  and  yet  author 
ity  and  confidence.  When  he  arose  and  came 
forward  there  was  something  peculiarly  grace 
ful  in  his  movements ;  when  he  began  to  speak 
a  thrill  of  astonishment  and  pleasure  went  over 
the  audience.  Every  mind  hung  upon  each 
word  that  fell  from  his  lips.  When  he  was 
done  a  man  near  me  protested  at  the  brevity  of 
the  address ;  Mr.  Phillips  had  spoken  nearly 
two  hours,  but  none  of  us  knew  it.  His  tall, 
powerful  figure  seemed  to  be  the  embodiment  of 
strength  in  repose  and  gave  an  impression  of 
intellectual  supremacy,  the  like  of  which  I  have 
never  known.  His  hair  was  quite  gray,  his 
eyes  were  keen  and  kindly,  his  complexion 
ruddy  and  eloquent  of  health  and  right  living. 
His  expression  was  tinged  with  a  certain  mel 
ancholy,  such  as  I  have  observed  in  the  faces 
of  most  men  to  whom  life  means  more  than  lust 
and  gluttony,  but  was  wonderfully  strong  and 
as  if  the  man  within  saw  only  fine  and  beautiful 
things  not  known  to  the  rest  of  us.  I  doubt  if 
any  person  that  heard  him  ever  quite  lost  the 
mental  effect  he  created. 

Something   pathetic    pertains    to   his    life   in 


PHILLIPS    THE    SOCIALIST  147 

these  years.  His  private  charities  and  his  sup 
port  of  the  Anti-Slavery  Standard  had 
strained  his  little  means,  so  that  he  was  obliged 
to  go  about  the  country  lecturing,  although  he 
had  long  hoped  to  be  able  to  spend  his  winters 
in  quiet  and  comfort  and  the  company  of  Mrs. 
Phillips.  His  lecture  seasons  began  in  Novem 
ber  and  lasted  until  April.  They  took  him  on 
long  tours  through  every  Northern  State, 
sometimes  entailing  great  hardship  and  ex 
posure.  He  was  long  past  sixty,  his  life  had 
been  one  ceaseless  struggle,  he  was  beginning 
to  feel  the  strain.  The  lectures,  too,  failed 
somewhat  in  popularity  after  he  had  come  to  be 
regarded  as  a  maniac  and  dangerous  person  on 
the  labor  question.  Yet  he  must  needs  go  the 
weary  round  year  after  year.  Something  pa 
thetic  pertained  also  to  his  own  view  of  himself. 
He  recognized  fully  the  utter  isolation  he  had 
made.  With  a  kind  of  smiling  sadness,  infin 
itely  moving,  he  used  to  refer  to  himself  as 
"  that  Ishmaelite,"  and  once  he  wrote  that  his 
home  was  a  sleeping  car  and  his  only  friends 
were  the  brakemen  and  porters.  The  health  of 
Mrs.  Phillips  continued  to  be,  in  her  own  opin 
ion,  most  precarious,  and  gave  him  ceaseless 
concern.  Thousands  of  adherents  that  on  the 
slavery  issue  had  stood  by  him  loyally,  turned 


148        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

from  him  as  soon  as  he  took  up  the  cause  of 
labor.  Others  were  old  and  retired,  the  fire 
gone  out,  the  spirit  sitting  in  the  ashes. 
Many  others  had  died.  The  generation  before 
which  he  had  played  so  great  a  part  was  pass 
ing;  he  was  being  left  alone.  Many  another 
man  so  situated  would  have  abandoned  a  cause 
utterly  unpromising  and  retired  to  his  fireside 
for  peace  and  enjoyment  in  his  closing  years. 
Wendell  Phillips  went  straight  on. 


IX 


THE  MODERN  WAR  AGAINST  PRIVI 
LEGE 

SOME  men  view  the  human  cause  with  con 
genital  indifference ;  some  serve  in  it  spasmod 
ically  and  at  the  touch  of  an  intermittent 
conscience;  some  view  it,  I  should  judge,  as  a 
kind  of  diversion;  some  seek  it  for  their  own 
preferment. 

To  Wendell  Phillips  it  was  a  sublime  reli 
gion  whereof  he  was  the  conscientious  devotee, 
serving  without  remission  and  performing  with 
equal  fidelity  and  in  a  spirit  of  joyous  zeal  all 
rites  great  or  small.  Liberty  he  loved  with  a 
kind  of  passion  and  a  fervent  loyalty  that  never 
wavered  nor  doubted ;  for  unlike  so  many  others 
of  her  followers,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Burke 
and  the  rest,  the  years  never  chilled  the  fire  in 
his  breast.  Out  of  his  religion  he  made  a  creed 
broad  enough  for  all  aspects  of  life.  For  all 
public  affairs  he  worshiped  justice  as  the  cure 

of  evil;  and  it  seemed  to  him  that  every  victim 
149 


150        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

of  injustice  anywhere  in  the  world  had  an  in 
fallible  claim  upon  the  utmost  service  of  every 
true  man.  For  the  private  walk,  apart  from 
the  world,  mercy,  kindness  and  purity  were  the 
sure  guides. 

He  did  not  only  the  charity  that  came  in  his 
way  to  do,  but  sought  abroad  for  occasions  to 
practise  the  faith  that  was  in  him.  For  the 
most  unfortunate  victims  of  the  present  system 
of  society  he  had  the  genuine  sympathy  and 
broad  personal  tolerance  that  seems  to  come 
only  to  those  that,  like  Phillips,  have  worked 
out  for  themselves  the  economic  bases  of  all 
social  ills.  He  felt  no  repugnance  toward 
criminals  and  jail-birds,  understanding  that 
these  are  merely  the  products  of  a  system  that 
darkens  the  whole  earth  with  countless  miser 
ies.  He  knew  that  men  are  chiefly  what  their 
environments  make  them,  and  he  turned  his 
resentment  upon  the  environments,  not  upon 
the  stricken  creatures  that  were  sent  out  thence 
to  prey  upon  the  world. 

When  he  was  in  Boston,  it  was  his  custom  to 
go  about  in  the  mornings  unostentatiously  from 
court  to  court  and  from  prison  to  prison  look 
ing  for  unfortunate  persons,  first  offenders  and 
those  that  had  plainly  erred  from  necessity, 
with  purpose  to  help  and  rescue  them.  Many 


MODERN    WAR    AGAINST    PRIVILEGE          151 

a  young  man  that  had  started  wrong  found  his 
path  reversed  for  him  and  never  knew  whose 
hand  was  reached  out  to  him  in  the  dark;  and 
it  was  partly  these  ventures  in  practical  char 
ity,  too  little  celebrated,  that  kept  his  purse 
lean  and  compelled  him,  in  his  own  phrase,  to 
spend  his  winters  battling  with  snow-drifts  as 
he  toured  the  country  delivering  lectures. 

As  a  general  rule,  in  this  world  of  ours,  the 
men  that  have  been  the  great  and  enduring 
artists  have  been  also  lovers  of  Liberty,  and  the 
lovers  of  Liberty  have  been  also  of  a  full  heart 
of  compassion.  If  you  are  a  follower  of  Shel 
ley,  the  poet  of  Liberty,  you  have  no  doubt 
paused  often  (not  always  with  undimmed  eyes, 
very  likely)  above  that  story  of  Shelley  at 
Great  Marlow  when  he  alone  befriended  and 
championed  the  wretched  girl  that  had  been 
led  astray.  Note  then  its  companion  piece  in 
the  life  of  Liberty's  orator. 

Going  home  across  Boston  Common  one  night 
Mr.  Phillips  was  accosted  by  a  courtezan.  She 
looked  in  his  face  and  then  apologized  for 
speaking  to  him.  "  You  are  not  of  my  kind," 
she  said,  "  but  for  the  love  of  God,  give  me 
some  money."  He  stopped  and  talked  with 
her;  he  was  not  ashamed,  bearing  in  mind  his 
Master  and  the  Magdalene,  to  take  her  arm 


152        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

and  walk  with  her  while  he  questioned  her ;  and 
he  ended  by  providing  her  with  shelter  and  em 
ployment  until  he  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing 
her  emancipated  and  reformed.  This  is  the 
one  incident  of  the  kind  of  which  we  have  posi 
tive  record,  but  we  may  be  sure  that  it  was  not 
alone  in  his  experience. 

In  all  this  he  makes  one  think  of  such  a 
knight  as  dear  old  Edmund  Spenser  dreamed, 
going  about  with  unmixed  devotion  to  do  loyal 
service  for  some  noble  conception  :?f  duty.  In 
deed,  I  have  stumbled  here  upon  the  very  word 
that  best  describes  him.  "  Sir  Galahad,"  a 
great  poet  named  him  in  one  of  the  fairest  of 
all  the  tributes  to  his  fame,  and  upon  every  one 
that  saw  him  for  the  first  time  there  was  always, 
I  think,  an  impression  made  of  a  something 
knightly  about  the  man.  "  A  courteous, 
kindly,  but  most  courageous  warrior,"  another 
observer  calls  him,  "  the  very  Red  Cross  Knight 
of  his  times." 

In  the  world  of  profits,  employers  and  busi 
ness,  he  continued  to  be  the  Ishmael,  for 
without  hint  of  turning,  he  went  his  way  de 
nouncing  the  system  that  bulwarked  profits  on 
one  side  and  multiplied  poverty  on  the  other. 
Labor  first  and  all  the  phases  of  its  cause,  and 
all  the  forces  that  preyed  upon  it,  then  tern- 


MODERN    WAR    AGAINST    PRIVILEGE          153 

perance  and  woman  suffrage  were  more  and 
more  the  favorite  themes  of  his  addresses.  I 
ought  to  give  you  a  few  specimens  from  these 
vigorous  appeals.  Here,  for  instance,  is  one  on 
the  burning  economic  issue  of  our  day  as  well 
as  his : 

Let  me  tell  you  why  I  am  interested  in  the 
labor  question.  Not  simply  because  of  the  long 
hours  of  labor;  not  simply  because  of  a  specific 
oppression  of  a  class.  I  sympathize  with  the 
sufferers  there;  I  am  ready  to  fight  on  their  side. 
But  I  look  out  upon  Christendom,  with  its  three 
hundred  millions  of  people,,  and  I  see  that  out 
of  this  number  one  hundred  millions  never  had 
enough  to  eat.  Physiologists  tell  us  that  this  body 
of  ours,  unless  it  is  properly  fed,  properly  de 
veloped,  fed  with  rich  blood  and  carefully  nour 
ished,  does  no  justice  to  the  brain.  You  can  not 
make  a  bright  man  nor  a  good  man  in  a  starved 
body,  and  so  this  one-third  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Christendom,  who  have  never  had  food  enough,  can 
never  be  what  they  should  be. 

Now  I  say  that  the  social  civilization  which 
condemns  every  third  man  in  it  to  be  below  the 
average  in  the  nourishment  God  prepared  for  him 
did  not  come  from  above;  it  came  from  below,  and 
the  sooner  it  goes  down  the  better. 

Come  on  this  side  of  the  ocean.  You  will  find 
forty  millions  of  people,  and  I  suppose  they  are 
in  the  highest  state  of  civilization;  and  yet  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  out  of  that  forty  mil 
lions,  ten  millions,  at  least,  who  get  up  in  the 
morning  and  go  to  bed  at  night,  spend  all  the 
day  in  the  mere  effort  to  get  bread  enough  to  live. 


154        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

They  have  not  elasticity  enough,  mind  or  body 
left  to  do  anything  in  the  way  of  intellectual  or 
moral  progress. 

Since  that  time,  of  course,  all  the  evil  condi 
tions  that  Mr.  Phillips  perceived  and  decried 
have  vastly  increased  upon  us. 

That  is  why  I  say,  lift  a  man,  give  him  life, 
let  him  work  eight  hours  a  day,  give  him  the 
school,  develop  his  taste  for  music,  give  him  a 
garden,  give  him  beautiful  things  to  see  and  good 
books  to  read,  and  you  will  starve  out  those  lower 
appetites.  ...  So  it  is  with  women  in  prostitu 
tion.  Poverty  is  the  road  to  it;  it  is  this  that 
makes  them  the  prey  of  the  wealthy  and  the  leisure 
of  another  class.  .  .  .  Give  a  hundred  women  a 
good  chance  to  get  a  good  living,  and  ninety-nine 
of  them  will  disdain  to  barter  their  virtue  for  gold. 

He  saw  that  poverty  was  the  source  of  social 
evils  and  that  poverty  was  unnecessary.  Ob 
serve  how  clearly  he  saw,  also,  the  threat  of  the 
autocracy  of  wealth. 

I  hail  the  Labor  movement  for  two  reasons; 
and  one  is  that  it  is  my  only  hope  for  democracy. 
At  the  time  of  the  anti-slavery  agitation,  I  was 
not  sure  whether  we  should  come  out  of  the  strug 
gle  with  one  republic  or  two;  but  republics  I  knew 
we  should  still  be.  I  am  not  so  confident,  indeed, 
that  we  shall  come  out  of  this  storm  as  a  republic 
unless  the  Labor  movement  succeeds.  Take  a 
power  like  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  and  the  New 
York  Central  Railroad,  and  there  is  no  legislative 
independence  that  can  exist  in  its  sight.  As  well 


MODERN    WAR    AGAINST    PRIVILEGE          155 

expect  a  green  vine  to  flourish  in  a  dark  cellar  as 
to  expect  honesty  to  exist  under  the  shadow  of 
those  upas  trees.  Unless  there  is  a  power  in  your 
movement,  industrially  and  politically,  the  last 
knell  of  democratic  liberty  in  this  Union  is  struck; 
for,  as  I  said,  there  is  no  power  in  one  State  to 
resist  such  a  giant  as  the  Pennsylvania  road. 

Colonel  Thomas  Scott,  of  the  Pennsylvania, 
was  the  J.  Pierpont  Morgan  of  his  day,  and  of 
him  Mr.  Phillips  said: 

We  have  thirty-eight  one-horse  Legislatures  in 
this  country,  and  we  have  a  man  like  Tom  Scott, 
with  three  hundred  and  fifty  million  dollars  in  his 
hands;  and  if  he  walks  through  the  States,  they 
[the  Legislatures]  have  no  power.  Why,  he  need 
not  move  at  all.  If  he  smokes  as  Grant  does,  a 
puff  of  the  waste  smoke  out  of  his  mouth  upsets, 
the  Legislature. 

Now,  there  is  nothing  but  the  rallying  of  men 
against  money  that  can  contest  with  that  power. 
Rally  industrially  if  you  will;  rally  for  eight  hours, 
for  a  little  division  of  profits,  for  co-operation; 
rally  for  such  a  banking  power  in  the  government 
as  would  give  us  money  at  three  per  cent. 

Only  organize  and  stand  together.  Claim  some 
thing  together  and  at  once;  let  the  nation  hear  a 
united  demand  from  the  laboring  voice,  and  then, 
when  you  have  got  that,  go  on  after  another;  but 
get  something. 

I  say,  let  the  debts  of  the  country  be  paid, 
abolish  the  banks,  and  let  the  government  lend 
every  Illinois  farmer  (if  he  wants  it)  who  is  now 
borrowing  money  at  10  per  cent,  money  on  the 
half-value  of  his  land  at  3  per  cent.  The  same 


156        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

policy  that  gave  a  million  acres  to  the  Pacific 
Railroad,  because  it  was  a  great  national  effort, 
will  allow  of  our  lending  Chicago  twenty  millions 
of  money  at  3  per  cent,  to  rebuild  it  [after  the 
great  Chicago  fire]. 

From  Boston  to  New  Orleans,  from  Mobile  to 
Rochester,  from  Baltimore  to  St.  Louis,  we  have 
now  but  one  purpose;  and  that  is,  having  driven 
all  other  political  questions  out  of  the  arena,  hav 
ing  abolished  slavery,  the  only  question  left  is 
labor  —  the  relations  of  capital  and  labor.  .  .  . 

If  you  do  your  duty  —  and  by  that  I  mean 
standing  together  and  being  true  to  each  other  — 
the  Presidential  election  you  will  decide,  every 
state  election  you  may  decide  if  you  please. 

If  you  want  power  in  this  country;  if  you  want 
to  make  yourselves  felt;  if  you  do  not  want  your 
children  to  wait  long  years  before  they  have  the 
bread  on  the  table  they  ought  to  have,  the  leisure 
in  their  lives  they  ought  to  have,  the  opportunities 
in  life  they  ought  to  have;  if  you  don't  want  to 
wait  yourselves  —  write  on  your  banner,  so  that 
every  political  trimmer  can  read  it,  so  that  every 
politician,  no  matter  how  short-sighted  he  may  be, 
can  read  it,  "We  never  forget!  If  you  launch 
the  arrow  of  sarcasm  at  labor,  we  never  forget; 
if  there  is  a  division  in  Congress,  and  you  throw 
your  vote  in  the  wrong  scale,  we  never  forget. 
You  may  go  down  on  your  knees  and  say,  '  I  am 
sorry  I  did  the  act ' ;  and  we  will  say,  '  It  will 
avail  you  in  heaven,  but  on  this  side  of  the  grave 
never/  "  So  that  a  man  in  taking  up  the  Labor 
Question  will  know  he  is  dealing  with  a  hair- 
trigger  pistol,  and  will  say,  "  I  am  to  be  true 
to  justice  and  to  man;  otherwise  I  am  a  dead 
duck." 


MODERN    WAR    AGAINST    PRIVILEGE          157 

The  one  way  out  of  the  nation's  sore  trouble 
and  from  the  monstrous  injustice  that  labor 
suffered  lay  in  the  organization  and  united  po 
litical  efforts  of  the  working  class.  He  saw 
it  and  in  every  address  he  made  on  labor  he 
urged  it.  Once  he  said : 

Now,  let  me  tell  you  where  the  great  weakness 
of  an  association  of  workingmen  is.  It  is  that  it 
cannot  wait.  It  does  not  know  where  to  get  its 
food  for  next  week.  If  it  is  kept  idle  for  ten 
days,  the  funds  of  the  society  are  exhausted. 
Capital  can  fold  its  arms,  and  wait  six  months; 
it  can  wait  a  year.  It  will  be  poorer,  but  it  does 
not  get  to  the  bottom  of  the  purse.  It  can  afford 
to  wait;  it  can  tire  you  out,  and  starve  you  out. 
And  what  is  there  against  that  immense  preponder 
ance  of  power  on  the  part  of  capital?  Simply 
organization.  That  makes  the  wealth  of  all  the 
wealth  of  every  one.  So  I  welcome  organization. 
.  .  .  One  hundred  thousand  men !  It  is  an  im 
mense  army.  I  do  not  care  whether  it  considers 
chiefly  the  industrial  or  the  political  questions;  it 
can  control  the  nation  if  it  is  in  earnest.  The  rea 
son  why  the  Abolitionists  brought  the  nation  down 
to  fighting  their  battle  is  that  they  were  really  in 
earnest,  knew  what  they  wanted,  and  were  deter 
mined  to  have  it.  Therefore  they  got  it.  The 
leading  statesmen  and  orators  of  the  day  said  they 
would  never  urge  Abolition;  but  a  determined  man 
in  a  printing-office  said  that  they  should,  and  — 
they  did  it. 

As  to  the  necessity  of  political  action  he 
said: 


158        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

Gentlemen,  we  see  the  benefit  of  going  into  poli 
tics.  If  we  had  not  rushed  into  politics,  had  not 
taken  Massachusetts  by  the  four  corners  and  shaken 
her,  you  never  would  have  written  your  criticisms. 
We  rush  into  politics  because  politics  is  the  safety- 
valve.  We  could  discuss  as  well  as  you  if  you 
would  only  give  us  bread  and  houses,  fair  pay  and 
leisure,  and  opportunities  to  travel:  we  could  sit 
and  discuss  the  question  for  the  next  fifty  years. 
It's  a  very  easy  thing  to  discuss,  for  a  gentleman 
in  his  study,  with  no  anxiety  about  to-morrow. 
Why,  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  the  reign  of 
Louis  XV  and  Louis  XVI,  in  France,  seated  in 
gilded  saloons  and  on  Persian  carpets,  surrounded 
with  luxury,  with  the  products  of  India  and  the 
curious  manufactures  of  ingenious  Lyons  and 
Rheims,  discussed  the  rights  of  man,  and  balanced 
them  in  dainty  phrases,  and  expressed  them  in 
such  quaint  generalizations  that  Jefferson  borrowed 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  from  their  hands. 
There  they  sat,  balancing  and  discussing  sweetly, 
making  out  new  theories,  and  daily  erecting  a 
splendid  architecture  of  debate,  till  the  angry  crowd 
broke  open  the  doors,  and  ended  the  discussion  in 
blood.  They  waited  too  long,  discussed  about  half 
a  century  too  long.  You  see,  discussion  is  very 
good  when  a  man  has  bread  to  eat,  and  his  chil 
dren  all  portioned  off,  and  his  daughters  married, 
and  his  house  furnished  and  paid  for,  and  his  will 
made;  but  discussion  is  very  bad  when 

..."  Ye  hear  the  children  weeping,  O  my  brothers  ! 
Ere  the  sorrow  comes  with  years  "; 

discussion  is  bad  when  a  class  bends  under  actual 
oppression.     We  want  immediate  action. 


MODERN    WAR    AGAINST    PRIVILEGE          159 

In  his  great  speech,  "  The  Foundation  of  the 
Labor  Movement,"  he  said : 

The  labor  of  yesterday,  capital,  is  protected 
sacredly.  Not  so  the  labor  of  to-day.  The  labor 
of  yesterday  gets  twice  the  protection  and  twice 
the  pay  that  the  labor  of  to-day  gets.  Why  is  it 
not  entitled  to  an  equal  share? 

Are  you  quite  certain  that  capital  —  the  child  of 
artificial  laws,  the  product  of  society,  the  mere 
growth  of  social  life  —  has  a  right  to  only  an  equal 
burden  with  labor,  the  living  spring?  We  doubt 
it  so  much  that  we  think  we  have  invented  a  way 
to  defeat  the  Pennsylvania  Central.  We  think  we 
have  devised  a  little  plan  by  which  we  will  save  the 
Congress  of  the  nation  from  the  moneyed  corpora 
tions  of  the  State.  When  we  get  into  power,  there 
is  one  thing  we  mean  to  do.  If  a  man  owns  a 
single  house,  we  will  tax  him  one  hundred  dollars. 
If  he  owns  ten  houses  of  like  value,  we  won't  tax 
him  one  thousand  dollars,  but  two  thousand  dollars. 
If  he  owns  a  hundred  houses,  we  won't  tax  him  ten 
thousand  dollars,  but  sixty  thousand  dollars;  and 
the  richer  a  man  grows,  the  bigger  his  tax,  so  that 
when  he  is  worth  forty  million  dollars  he  shall  not 
have  more  than  twenty  thousand  dollars  a  year  to 
live  on.  We'll  double  and  treble  and  quintuple  and 
sextuple  and  increase  tenfold  the  taxes,  till  Stewart 
out  of  his  uncounted  millions,  and  the  Pennsylvania 
Central  out  of  its  measureless  income,  shall  not 
have  anything  more  than  a  moderate  lodging  and 
an  honest  table.  The  corporations  we  would  have 
are  those  of  associated  labor  and  capital,  —  co 
operation. 

We'll  crumble  up  wealth  by  making  it  unprofit 
able  to  be  rich.  The  poor  man  shall  have  a  larger 


160         THE    STOEY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

income  in  proportion  as  he  is  poor.  The  rich  man 
shall  have  a  lesser  income  in  proportion  as  he  is 
rich.  You  will  say,  "  Is  that  just?  "  My  friends, 
it  is  safe.  Man  is  more  valuable  than  money. 
You  say,  "  Then  capital  will  go  to  Europe."  Good 
heavens,  let  it  go ! 

About  this  time  he  received  a  visit  from 
Lucien  Sanial,  who  had  been  one  of  the  early 
republican  patriots  of  France  and  was  then  a 
leader  of  the  International,  one  of  the  first 
working  men's  alliances.  Mr.  Sanial  explained 
the  scope  and  purposes  and  platform  of  the 
order  in  which  he  was  so  much  interested.  Mr. 
Phillips  listened  until  his  visitor  made  an  end 
and  then  reaching  into  his  desk  produced  writ 
ings  and  speeches  of  his  own  in  which  he  had 
advocated  the  identical  principles  of  the  Inter 
national.  Mr.  Sanial  was  delighted  and  urged 
him  to  take  up  the  cause  and  lead  it  and  make 
it  popular  in  America.  Mr.  Phillips  sadly 
shook  his  head. 

"  I  am  too  old,"  he  said.  "  I  must  no  longer 
think  of  doing  the  work  of  you  young  men.  I 
can  give  you  all  my  sympathy,  and  do,  but  the 
day  for  new  causes  has  passed  from  me.  Do 
you  yroung  men  take  it  up  and  carry  it  through 
to  success." 

This  is  the  first  acknowledgment  I  have  found 
from  him  anywhere  that  he  was  beginning  to 


MODERN    WAR    AGAINST    PRIVILEGE          161 

feel  the  burden  of  years  and  of  labors.  For 
nearly  forty  years  these  had  been  incessant. 
Except  for  that  one  excursion  to  Europe  in  his 
youth,  he  had  not  known,  since  he  stepped  upon 
the  platform  of  Faneuil  Hall  at  the  Love  joy 
meeting,  one  day  of  rest.  Some  friends  now 
ursed  him  to  take  the  repose  that  he  had  earned, 
but  although  Mr.  Phillips  did  not  feel  equal  to 
emtarking  upon  new  and  arduous  movements, 
he  was  still  less  willing  to  keep  silent  upon  the 
issues  to  which  he  had  given  his  faith.  He 
foresaw  that  his  part  was  to  die  in  the  harness, 
not  to  rust  in  idleness,  and  he  continued  to  give 
unequivocal  testimony  in  their  behalf. 

Men  called  Napoleon  the  Sword  of  the 
French  Revolution.  Phillips  was  the  perfect 
son  of  the  American  Revolution  and  the  em 
bodiment  of  its  idea.  All  its  achievements  and 
its  great  intellectual  leaders  he  viewed  with  a 
peculiar  reverence,  and  his  favorite  line  of 
thinking  was  that  what  they  were  to  the  mon 
archists  of  their  day  the  true  American  ought 
to  be  toward  the  reactionaries  of  his.  So  much 
as  was  gained  for  progress  by  the  generation  of 
the  Revolution  ought  to  be  gained  for  progress 
by  every  generation ;  for  there  should  be  no  such 
thing  as  standing  still,  no  such  thing  as  con 
tentment  with  what  had  been  inherited  from  the 


162        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

past.  Every  age  should  have  its  Samuel 
Adams,  its  James  Otis  and  its  Patrick  Henry. 
The  places  that  these  men  had  made  famous 
by  their  deeds  or  speeches  were  sacred  to  him; 
in  his  walks  about  the  city  he  was  fond  of  vis 
iting  them  and  recalling  the  memories  attached 
to  each;  and  none  was  dearer  to  him  than  the 
Old  South  Meeting  House,  the  oldest  building- 
in  Boston.  In  1876,  business  threatened  to 
destroy  this  interesting  relic,  for  it  had  been 
sold  by  the  Society  that  owned  it  and  the 
ground  space  was  demanded  by  profits.  Mr. 
Phillips  took  part  in  a  movement  that,  appeal 
ing  to  the  patriotic  pride  of  Boston,  raised  a 
fund  large  enough  to  preserve  the  historic 
building.  In  behalf  of  this  movement  he  de 
livered  on  June  14,  1876,  in  the  church  itself, 
one  of  the  most  famous  of  his  orations.  He 
said: 

These  arches  will  speak  to  us,  as  long  as 
they  stand,  of  the  sublime  and  sturdy  religious 
enthusiasm  of  Adams;  of  Otis's  passionate  elo 
quence  and  single-hearted  devotion;  of  Warren 
in  his  young  genius  and  enthusiasm;  of  a  plain, 
unaffected  but  high-souled  people  who  ventured 
all  for  a  principle,  and  to  transmit  to  us,  unim 
paired,  the  free  life  and  self-government  which 
they  inherited.  Above  and  around  us  unseen  hands 
have  written,  "  This  is  the  cradle  of  Civil  Liberty, 
child  of  earnest  religious  faith."  I  will  not  say 


MODERN    WAR    AGAINST    PRIVILEGE          163 

it  is  a  nobler  consecration;  I  will  not  say  that  it  is 
a  better  use.  I  only  say  that  we  come  here  to 
save  what  our  fathers  consecrated  to  the  memories 
of  the  most  successful  struggle  the  race  has  ever 
made  for  the  liberties  of  man.  Think  twice  before 
you  touch  these  walls.  We  are  only  the  world's 
trustees.  The  Old  South  no  more  belongs  to  us 
than  Luther's  or  Hampden's  or  Brutus's  name  does 
to  Germany,  England  or  Rome.  Each  and  all  are 
held  in  trust  as  torchlight  guides  and  inspiration 
for  any  man  struggling  for  justice  and  ready  to 
die  for  the  truth. 

Among  those  that  listened  to  and  applauded 
his  address  on  this  occasion  was  Dom  Pedro, 
then  Emperor  of  Brazil.  Great  as  it  was,  Mr. 
Phillips  surpassed  it  three  years  later  by  his 
wonderful  and  moving  tribute  to  William  Lloyd 
Garrison,  whose  life  of  service  came  to  an  end! 
on  May  23,  1879.  "  Serene,  fearless,  marvel 
ous  man  I  Mortal,  with  so  few  shortcomings ! 
Farewell,  for  a  very  little  while,  noblest  of 
Christian  men !  Leader,  brave,  tireless,  un 
selfish!  When  the  ear  heard  thee,  then  it 
blessed  thee ;  the  eye  that  saw  thee  gave  witness 
to  thee.  More  truly  than  it  could  ever  hereto 
fore  be  said  since  the  great  patriarch  wrote  it, 
*  the  blessing  of  him  that  was  ready  to  perish ' 
was  thine  eternal  great  reward." 

All  these  years  he  continued  upon  the  lecture 
platform  throughout,  each  winter  season.     The 


164         THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

range  of  his  subjects  was  phenomenal;  no  other 
orator  has  ever  attained  to  so  wide  a  variety. 
He  had  a  most  unusual  gift  by  which  he  made 
interesting  every  topic  he  touched  upon,  so  that 
whether  his  lectures  were  upon  phases  of 
science,  history,  biography,  reform,  political 
economy,  law,  religion  or  politics,  the  listener 
was  always  charmed  and  always  carried  away 
a  new  thought  or  a  memorable  phrase.  Some 
times  he  wove  together  into  one  his  discourses 
upon  "  Labor,"  "  Temperance  "  and  "  Woman 
Suffrage,"  his  three  favorite  reforms ;  and  once 
he  accomplished  the  seemingly  impossible  feat 
of  uniting  into  one  lecture  addresses  so  far 
apart  as  "  Toussaint  L'Ouverture  "  and  "  The 
Lost  Arts."  This  latter  achievement  was  to 
relieve  the  embarrassment  of  a  rural  lyceum 
association  that  could  not  decide  which  of  the 
two  it  wrould  prefer. 


X 


THE    ATTACK    ON    THE    CITADEL    OF 
REACTION 

THERE  is  courage  for  the  battle-field  and 
another  order  of  courage  that  stands  squarely 
before  the  hostile  ranks  of  one's  own  order  and 
deliberately  speaks  home  the  most  unpalatable 
truths.  When  in  1861  mobs  pursued  him 
across  Boston  Common  and  besieged  his  house, 
Mr.  Phillips  looked  upon  them  with  absolutely 
unshaken  fortitude.  "  All  this  time,"  said 
Colonel  Higginson,  a  witness  of  the  scene, 
"  there  was  something  peculiarly  striking  and 
characteristic  in  his  demeanor.  There  was  ab 
solutely  nothing  of  bull-dog  combativeness ;  but 
a  careless,  buoyant,  almost  patrician  air,  as  if 
nothing  in  the  way  of  mob-violence  were  worth 
considering,  and  all  the  threats  of  opponents 
were  simply  beneath  contempt."  This  was  his 
physical  courage  in  1861  when  his  life  was  in 
cessantly  in  peril. 

In  1881  he  gave,  of  many,  the  most  conspic- 
165 


166         THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

uous  illustration  of  the  still  nobler  courage  that 
speaks  conviction  disregarding  aught  else. 
Although  he  was  a  graduate  of  Harvard,  and 
its  most  distinguished  living  graduate,  the  in 
stitution  had  never  paid  to  him  the  slightest 
token  of  regard  or  appreciation,  but  had  stood 
aloof,  looking  upon  him  with  cold  disapproval 
as  a  mere  agitator.  But  in  1881  he  was  in 
vited  by  his  own  literary  society  to  deliver  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration.  Colonel  Higginson 
testifies  that  "  an  unwilling  audience "  assem 
bled  on  this  occasion,  and  assuredly  it  was  not 
without  reason  unwilling,  for  there  is  not  of 
record  another  such  terrific  arraignment  as 
reactionary  scholasticism  received  that  day. 

"  The  Scholar  in  a  Republic  "  was  the  title 
Mr.  Phillips  chose  for  his  address.  He  had 
prepared  it  with  great  care,  recognizing  that 
at  last  he  had  an  opportunity  to  strike  one 
great  blow  at  the  traditional  enemy  of  democ 
racy  in  America;  for  then  as  now  the  Ameri 
can  university  was  the  great  backward  looking 
influence  in  the  national  life.  He  had  known 
only  too  well  in  his  own  career  how  doggedly 
the  American  college  sets  its  back  against 
every  democratic  advance;  how  cowardly  the 
educated  class  had  been  in  the  slavery  issue; 
how  persistently  it  had  hampered  the  feet 


ATTACK    ON    THE    CITADEL    OF    REACTION         167 

of  the  Abolition  movement ;  how  it  had  sneered 
and  was  then  sneering  at  every  mention  of  the 
labor  question,  more  momentous  than  chattel 
slavery.  He  must  have  made  up  his  mind  to 
say  this  to  his  hearers  in  words  they  could  not 
possibly  forget.  The  men  he  was  to  address 
were  the  very  Brahmins  of  that  social  order 
into  which  he  himself  had  been  born.  He  was, 
therefore,  doubly  affronting  them,  for  in  their 
eyes  he  was  here  again,  as  so  often  before,  a 
traitor  to  his  caste ;  but  now  with  offense  pe 
culiar  and  redoubled. 

Into  the  very  face  of  the  cold  and  intellec 
tual  aristocracy  he  hurled  the  unadorned  truth. 
He  tempered  no  words,  he  disguised  nothing,  he 
drove  home  his  bare  convictions  and  spared 
none.  Colonel  Higginson,  who  heard  it,  says 
that  this  was  the  most  remarkable  effort  of 
Mr.  Phillips's  life.  "  He  never  seemed  more  at 
ease,  more  colloquial  and  more  extemporane 
ous."  Yet  in  form,  construction,  compact 
utterance,  lofty  and  well  considered  ideas,  it  is 
the  most  perfect  specimen  of  American  elo 
quence.  A  kind  of  noble  passion  vibrates  in 
every  word  of  it,  as  paragraph  by  paragraph 
it  tears  from  the  reactionary  scholar  the  veil 
of  hypocrisy  and  leaves  him  naked  and  con 
temptible. 


168        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL,    PHILLIPS 

Timid  scholarship  either  shrinks  from  sharing  in 
these  agitations  or  denounces  them  as  vulgar  and 
dangerous  interference  by  incompetent  hands  with 
matters  above  them.  A  chronic  distrust  of  the 
people  pervades  the  book-educated  class  of  the 
North;  they  shrink  from  that  free  speech  which 
is  God's  normal  school  for  educating  men,  throw 
ing  upon  them  the  grave  responsibility  of  deciding 
great  questions  and  so  lifting  them  to  a  higher 
level  of  intellectual  and  moral  life.  Trust  the 
people  —  the  wise  and  the  ignorant,  the  good  and 
the  bad  —  with  the  gravest  questions,  and  in  the 
end  you  educate  the  race.  At  the  same  time  you 
secure  not  perfect  institutions,  not  necessarily  good 
ones,  but  the  best  institutions  possible  while  human 
nature  is  the  basis  and  the  only  material  to  build 
with.  Men  are  educated  and  the  State  is  uplifted 
by  allowing  all  —  every  one  —  to  broach  all  their 
mistakes  and  advocate  all  their  errors.  The  com 
munity  that  will  not  protect  its  most  ignorant  and 
unpopular  member  in  the  free  utterance  of  his 
opinions,  no  matter  how  false  or  hateful,  is  only 
a  gang  of  slaves ! 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  foundation  of  the 
democratic  faith  has  never  had  an  equal  expres 
sion. 

I  urge  on  college-bred  men  that  as  a  class  they 
fail  in  republican  duty  when  they  allow  others  to 
lead  in  the  agitation  of  the  great  social  questions 
which  stir  and  educate  the  age. 

He  then  reviewed  American  scholarship  in 
its  relation  to  the  great  issues  in  the  country's 
history.  What  had  it  done  in  the  great  move- 


ATTACK    ON    THE    CITADEL    OF    REACTION         169 

ment  against  chattel  slavery?  He  instanced 
as  typical  of  its  spirit  one  of  the  greatest  of 
American  scholars  that  in  Congress  quoted 
from  the  New  Testament  to  uphold  slavery  and 
offered  to  bear  a  musket  in  its  defense. 

And  again  it  was  so  in  the  case  of  John 
Brown.  "  While  the  first  of  American  schol 
ars  could  hardly  find  in  the  rich  vocabulary 
of  Saxon  scorn  words  enough  to  express,  amid 
the  plaudits  of  his  class,  his  loathing  and  con 
tempt  for  John  Brown,  Europe  thrilled  to  him 
as  proof  that  our  institutions  had  not  lost  all 
their  native  and  distinctive  life.  She  had 
grown  tired  of  our  parrot  note  and  cold  moon 
light  reflection  of  older  civilizations.  .  .  .  But 
long  before  our  ranks  marched  up  State  Street 
to  the  John  Brown  song,  the  banks  of  the  Seine 
had  hailed  the  new  life  which  had  given  us 
another  and  nobler  Washington.  .  .  .  And  yet 
the  book-men,  as  a  class,  have  not  yet  acknowl 
edged  him."  For  forty  years,  the  men  that 
had  urged  Abolition  had  been  obliged  to  combat 
first  of  all  the  opposition  of  the  highly  educated 
class.  What  had  that  class  done  for  other  just 
and  worthy  causes?  In  the  movements  for 
prison  reform  and  criminal  law  reform  it  had 
never  taken  the  slightest  interest.  It  had 
allowed  the  work  of  mitigating  the  barbarous 


170        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

criminal  code  to  be  done  by  men  outside,  by 
members  of  another  class.  What  had  it  done 
for  woman  suffrage,  for  temperance,  for  polit 
ical  regeneration?  In  all  these  movements  its 
attitude  had  been  one  of  cold  hostility  because 
each  movement  represented  something  demo 
cratic  and  the  fixed  position  of  the  educated 
class  was  against  democracy. 

He  turned  to  other  problems  and  confronted 
his  hearers  with  the  record  of  their  indifference 
to  such  a  cause  as  that  of  Ireland.  What  edu 
cated  man  had  ever  lifted  his  voice  against  the 
further  oppression  of  the  Irish  people?  And 
yet,  their  cause  was  the  cause  upon  which  the 
American  nation  had  been  founded. 

We  ought  to  clap  our  hands  at  every  fresh  Irish 
"  outrage,"  as  a  parrot-press  styles  it,  aware  that 
it  is  only  a  far-off  echo  of  the  musket-shots  that 
rattled  against  the  old  State  House  on  the  fifth 
of  March,  1770,  and  of  the  warwhoop  that  made 
the  tiny  spire  of  the  Old  South  tremble  when  Bos 
ton  rioters  emptied  the  three  India  tea  ships  into 
the  sea. 

He  passed  next  to  a  subject  still  less  pal 
atable  to  his  Brahmin  hearers  —  the  attitude 
of  educated  Americans  toward  the  revolution 
ists  in  Russia. 

Then  note  the  scorn  and  disgust  with  which  we 
gather  up  our  garments  about  us  and  disown  the 


ATTACK    OX    THE    CITADEL    OF    REACTION         171 

Sam  Adams  and  William  Prescott,  the  George 
Washington  and  John  Brown  of  St.  Petersburg, 
the  spiritual  descendants,  the  living  representatives 
of  those  that  make  our  history  worth  anything  in 
the  world's  annals  —  the  Nihilists. 

Nihilism  is  the  righteous  and  honorable  resist 
ance  of  a  people  crushed  under  an  iron  rule. 
Nihilism  is  evidence  of  life.  When  "  order  reigns 
in  Warsaw,"  it  is  spiritual  death.  Nihilism  is  the 
last  weapon  of  victims  choked  and  manacled  beyond 
all  other  resistance.  It  is  crushed  humanity's  only 
means  of  making  the  oppressor  tremble.  God 
means  that  unjust  power  shall  be  insecure;  and 
every  move  of  the  giant,  prostrate  in  chains, 
whether  it  be  to  lift  a  single  dagger,  or  stir  a 
city's  revolt,  is  a  lesson  on  justice.  One  might  well 
tremble  for  the  future  of  the  race  if  such  a  despot 
ism  could  exist  without  provoking  the  bloodiest 
resistance. 

I  honor  Nihilism,  since  it  redeems  human  nature 
from  the  suspicion  of  being  utterly  vile,  made  up 
only  of  heartless  oppressors  and  contented  slaves. 
Every  line  in  our  history,  every  interest  of  civiliza 
tion,  bids  us  rejoice  when  the  tyrant  grows  pale 
and  the  slave  rebellious.  We  cannot  but  pity  the 
suffering  of  any  human  being,  however  richly  de 
served;  but  such  pity  must  not  confuse  our  moral 
sense.  Humanity  gains. 

Chatham  rejoiced  when  our  fathers  rebelled. 
For  every  single  reason  they  alleged,  Russia  counts 
a  hundred,  each  one  ten  times  bitterer  than  any 
Hancock  or  Adams  could  give.  Sam  Johnson's 
standing  toast  in  Oxford  port  was,  "  Success  to  the 
first  insurrection  of  slaves  in  Jamaica," —  a  senti 
ment  Southey  echoed.  "  Eschew  cant,"  said  the 
old  moralist.  But  of  all  the  cants  that  are  canted 


12         THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

in  this  canting  world,  though  the  cant  of  piety  may 
be  the  worst,  the  cant  of  Americans  bewailing  Rus 
sian  nihilism  is  the  most  disgusting. 

In  Russia  there  is  no  press,  no  debate,  no  ex 
planation  of  what  government  does,  no  remon 
strance  allowed,  no  agitation  of  public  issues. 
Dead  silence,  like  that  which  reigns  at  the  summit 
of  Mount  Blanc,  freezes  the  whole  empire,  long 
ago  described  as  "  a  despotism  tempered  by  assassi 
nation."  Meanwhile,  such  despotism  has  unsettled 
the  brains  of  the  ruling  family,  as  unbridled  power 
doubtless  made  some  of  the  twelve  Caesars  insane 
—  a  madman  sporting  with  the  lives  and  comfort 
of  a  hundred  millions  of  men.  The  young  girl 
whispers  in  her  mother's  ear,  under  a  ceiled  roof, 
her  pity  for  a  brother  knouted  and  dragged  half 
dead  into  exile  for  his  opinions.  The  next  week 
she  is  stripped  naked  and  flogged  to  death  in  the 
public  square.  No  inquiry,  no  explanation,  no 
trial,  no  protest;  one  dead  uniform  silence  —  the 
law  of  the  tyrant.  Where  is  there  ground  for  any 
hope  of  peaceful  change  ?  Where  the  fulcrum  upon 
which  you  can  plant  any  possible  lever? 

Machiavelli's  sorry  picture  of  poor  human  na 
ture  would  be  fulsome  flattery  if  men  could  keep 
still  under  such  oppression.  No,  no !  In  such  a 
land  dynamite  and  the  dagger  are  the  necessary 
and  proper  substitutes  for  Faneuil  Hall  and  the 
Daily  Advertiser.  Anything  that  will  make  the 
madman  quake  in  his  bedchamber,  and  arouse  his 
victims  into  recklessness  and  desperate  resistance. 
This  is  the  only  view  an  American,  the  child  of 
1620  and  1776,  can  take  of  Nihilism.  Any  other 
unsettles  and  perplexes  the  ethics  of  our  civiliza 
tion. 

Born  within  sight  of  Bunker  Hill,  in  a  common- 


ATTACK    OX    THE    CITADEL    OF    REACTION         173 

wealth  which  adopts  the  motto  of  Algernon  Sydney, 
sub  libertate  quietem  ("  accept  no  peace  without 
liberty  ")  ;  son  of  Harvard,  whose  first  pledge  was 
"  Truth  " ;  citizen  of  a  republic  based  on  the  claim 
that  no  government  is  rightful  unless  resting  on 
the  consent  of  the  people  and  which  assumes  to 
lead  in  asserting  the  rights  of  humanity  —  I  at 
least  can  say  nothing  else  and  nothing  less;  no, 
not  if  every  tile  on  Cambridge  roofs  were  a  devil 
hooting  my  words ! 

I  shall  bow  to  any  rebuke  from  those  who  hold 
Christianity  to  command  entire  non-resistance. 
But  criticism  from  any  other  quarter  is  only  that 
nauseous  hypocrisy  which,  stung  by  threepenny 
tea-tax,  piles  Bunker  Hill  with  granite  and  statues, 
prating  all  the  time  of  patriotism  and  broadswords, 
while,  like  another  Pecksniff,  it  recommends  a  cen 
tury  of  dumb  submission  and  entire  non-resistance 
to  the  Russians,  who  for  a  hundred  years  have  seen 
their  sons  by  thousands  dragged  to  death  or  exile 
—  no  one  knows  which  in  this  worse  than  Venetian 
mystery  of  police  —  and  their  maidens  flogged  to 
death  in  the  market-place,  and  who  share  the  same 
fate  if  they  presume  to  ask  why. 

Before  the  war,  Americans  were  like  the  crowd 
in  that  terrible  hall  of  Eblis  which  Beckford 
painted  for  us  —  each  man  with  his  hand  pressed 
on  the  incurable  sore  in  his  bosom,  and  pledged 
not  to  speak  of  it;  compared  with  other  lands,  we 
were  intellectually  and  morally  a  nation  of  cow 
ards.  ...  At  last  that  disgraceful  seal  of  slave 
complicity  is  broken.  Let  us  inaugurate  a  new  de 
parture,  recognize  that  we  are  afloat  on  the  current 
of  Niagara,  eternal  vigilance  the  condition  of  our 
safety,  that  we  are  irrevocably  pledged  to  the 


174        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

world  not  to  go  back  to  bolts  and  bars  —  could  not 
if  we  would,  and  would  not  if  we  could.  Never 
again  be  ours  the  fastidious  scholarship  that  shrinks 
from  rude  contact  with  the  masses.  Very  pleas 
ant  it  is  to  sit  high  up  in  the  world's  theatres  and 
criticise  the  ungraceful  struggles  of  the  gladiators, 
shrug  one's  shoulders  at  the  actors'  harsh  cries, 
and  let  every  one  know  that  but  for  "  this  villainous 
saltpetre  you  would  yourself  have  been  a  soldier." 
But  Bacon  says,  "  in  the  theatre  of  man's  life,  God 
and  his  angels  only  should  be  lookers  on."  "  Sin 
is  not  taken  out  of  man  as  Eve  was  out  of  Adam 
by  putting  him  to  sleep."  "  Very  beautiful,"  says 
Richter,  "  is  the  eagle  when  he  floats  with  out 
stretched  wings  aloft  in  the  clear  blue;  but  sub 
lime  when  he  plunges  down  through  the  tempest 
to  his  eyry  on  the  cliff,  where  his  unfledged  young 
ones  dwell  and  are  starving."  Accept  proudly  the 
analysis  of  Fisher  Ames :  '*  A  monarchy  is  a  man 
of  war,  staunch,  iron-ribbed  and  resistless  when 
under  full  sail;  yet  a  single  hidden  rock  sends  her 
to  the  bottom.  Our  republic  is  a  raft,  hard  to  steer 
and  your  feet  always  wet;  but  nothing  can  sink 
her."  If  the  Alps,  piled  in  cold  and  silence  be 
the  emblem  of  despotism,  we  joyfully  take  the 
ever  restless  ocean  for  ours, —  only  pure  because 
never  still. 

Colonel  Higginson  says  that  "  many  a  re 
spectable  lawyer  and  divine  felt  his  blood  run 
cold  "  when  he  realized  the  significance  of  these 
utterances. 

One  may  perceive  clearly  from  this  and  other 
similar  specimens  that  democracy  was  with 
Wendell  Phillips  much  more  than  a  passing 


ATTACK    ON    THE    CITADEL    OF    REACTION         175 

belief;  it  was  the  active  principle  of  all  healthy 
public  life  that  he  would  apply  in  large  meas 
ure  whenever  any  of  our  institutions  seemed  to 
be  at  fault.  In  this  Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration, 
he  made  some  slighting  reference  to  civil-serv 
ice  reform,  which  was  bitterly  resented.  This 
inspired  him  to  a  fuller  exposition  of  his  views. 
He  objected,  he  said,  to  civil-service  reform  as 
urged  by  the  recognized  reformers,  because  it 
was  not  democratic.  Instead  of  creating  an 
office-holding  caste,  as  they  proposed,  he  would 
solve  the  whole  difficulty  by  applying  democ 
racy  to  it.  He  would  have  all  the  postmasters, 
custom  officers  and  the  like  elected  by  the  peo 
ple  instead  of  being  appointed;  for  by  this 
change  both  power  and  responsibility  would 
rest  in  the  people's  hands,  where  alone  it  should 
rest. 

Mr.  Phillips  still  further  alienated  business 
and  the  middle  class  by  his  support  of  General 
Benjamin  F.  Butler,  who  now  returned  to  pol 
itics  and  succeeded  in  being  elected,  on  an  inde 
pendent  nomination,  to  the  governorship  of 
Massachusetts.  Butler  was  in  bourgeois  eyes 
the  very  political  devil.  He  was  believed  to 
win  his  power  in  politics  by  what  are  called 
"  all  the  tricks  of  the  demagogue,"  and  his  suc 
cess  was  believed  to  herald  some  kind  of 


176         THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

proletarian  uprising  that  imminently  threat 
ened  profits.  Mr.  Phillips  gave  his  support  to 
Butler  because  Butler  represented  a  protest 
against  existing  conditions  and  stood  for  the 
emancipation  of  labor.  But  no  reasons,  how 
ever  good,  could  have  excused  the  act  in  the 
eyes  of  those  that  hated  democracy.  They  did 
not  forgive  Mr.  Phillips ;  they  have  not  forgiven 
him  yet;  they  and  their  class  will  never  forgive 
him.  In  the  long  lists  of  grievances  this  class 
has  against  him,  his  support  of  Butler  is  not 
the  least  ponderable. 

For  all  this  Mr.  Phillips  cared  even  less  than 
he  had  cared  in  his  younger  days  for  the  wrath 
of  the  slave-owning  Interests.  The  world  and 
its  opinions  meant  very  little;  few  things  con 
cerned  him  now  but  the  causes  to  which  he  had 
given  his  life,  and  his  constant  care  for  Mrs. 
Phillips.  He  felt  that  his  part  in  the  fight  was 
almost  done. 

At  the  beginning  of  1882,  he  was  obliged  to 
move  from  the  old  house  at  No.  26  Essex  Street, 
in  which  he  and  his  wife  had  lived  so  comfort 
ably  for  forty  years.  The  city  had  decided  to 
widen  Harrison  Avenue  and  the  work  would  in 
volve  the  demolition  of  the  house.  Mr.  Phil 
lips  was  beyond  seventy;  he  had  for  his  old 
home  a  very  great  attachment;  to  leave  it  was 


ATTACK    ON    THE    CITADEL    OF    REACTION         177 

a  genuine  hardship.  He  found  new  quarters 
at  No.  37  Common  Street,  but  the  charm  was 
broken.  Once  after  the  Essex  Street  home  had 
been  destroyed  he  went  back  and  stood  for  a 
time  looking  at  the  vacant  site.  "  It  is  no 
matter,"  he  said ;  "  I  am  almost  through  with 
it  all." 

One  that  knew  him  well  and  recalls  much 
about  him  that  throws  light  upon  his  character, 
tells  me  of  seeing  him  about  this  time  walking 
slowly  up  Beacon  Hill  and  examining  all  the 
sights  of  the  place  with  such  interest  as  a 
stranger  might  show.  His  tall  figure  was  per 
fectly  erect,  his  hair  was  white,  there  was  about 
every  movement  a  certain  authoritative  and 
still  graceful  significance;  he  gave  the  impres 
sion  of  a  man  perfectly  sure  of  himself.  At 
the  top  of  the  hill  he  stood  for  a  long  time  care 
fully  observing  the  State  House,  as  if  he  had 
never  seen  it  before.  Then  he  turned  and 
looked  out  over  the  city,  and  my  informant  says 
that  the  image  that  came  into  his  mind  was 
that  of  St.  Genevieve  watching  over  her  city  of 
Paris,  as  depicted  in  the  Pantheon. 

That  fall  and  early  winter  he  was  out  lec 
turing  as  usual  and  apparently  in  good  health. 
On  December  3,  1883,  he,  with  William  Lloyd 
Garrison,  Jr.,  was  a  speaker  at  Old  South 


178        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

Church  upon  the  occasion  of  the  unveiling  of 
Anne  Whitney's  statue  of  Harriet  Martineau. 
He  spoke  with  great  feeling,  directing  his  re 
marks,  as  was  his  usual  custom,  to  bear  upon 
the  question  that  was  always  uppermost  in  his 
thoughts. 

Harriet  Martineau  saw,  not  merely  the  question 
of  free  speech,  but  the  grandeur  of  the  great  move 
ment  just  then  opened.  This  great  movement  is 
second  only  to  the  Reformation  in  the  history  of 
the  English  and  the  German  race.  In  time  to 
come,  when  the  grandeur  of  this  movement  is  set 
forth  in  history,  you  will  see  its  proportions  and 
beneficial  results.  Harriet  Martineau  saw  it  fifty 
years  ago,  and  after  that  she  was  one  of  us.  She 
was  always  the  friend  of  the  poor.  Prisoner, 
slave,  wage-serf,  worn-out  by  toil  in  the  mill,  no 
matter  who  the  sufferer,  there  was  always  one 
person  who  could  influence  Tory  and  Liberal  to 
listen. 

It  was  his  last  public  address.  On  January 
1,  1884,  he  wrote  to  Patrick  Collins,  then  a 
member  of  Congress  from  Boston,  begging  at 
tention  to  the  condition  of  Alaska,  which  was 
then  without  a  territorial  government  and  ap 
parently  in  a  state  of  anarchy.  I  think  this 
was  his  last  letter  on  public  affairs.  On  Jan 
uary  26,  he  was  seized  with  an  acute  form  of 
heart  disease.  He  lingered  a  week,  suffering 
great  agony  and  perfectly  aware  of  his  doom, 


ATTACK    ON    THE    CITADEL    OF    REACTION         179 

but  always  calm  and  cheerful.  His  extraordi 
nary  power  of  self-control  that  had  borne  him 
unmoved  through  so  many  trying  scenes  did  not 
desert  him  now.  "  I  have  no  fear  of  death," 
he  said  to  his  physician,  who  was  also  his 
friend.  "  I  have  long  foreseen  it.  My  only 
regret  is  for  poor  Ann.  I  had  hoped  to  close 
her  eyes  before  mine  were  shut."  To  another 
friend  he  declared  his  absolute  Christian  faith 
and  confidence.  His  faculties  remained  per 
fectly  clear;  he  talked  cheerfully  with  the 
watchers  and  tried  to  prevent  them  from  taking 
any  trouble  on  his  account.  About  six  o'clock 
on  the  evening  of  Saturday,  February  2, 
1884,  he  sighed,  closed  his  eyes  and  passed 
away  like  one  sinking  into  sleep. 

The  immediate  cause  of  his  death  was  ascer 
tained  to  be  angina  pectoris;  but  an  eminent 
medical  authority  declared  it  was  something 
else.  In  his  judgment  the  incessant  attacks  of 
more  than  forty  years  had  worn  down  the  war 
rior's  heart ;  under  the  brave  and  unruffled  front 
that  he  presented  to  the  world,  the  arrows  had 
taken  effect  at  last. 

The  funeral,  in  accordance  with  Mr.  Phil- 
lips's  known  preference,  was  most  simple. 
From  the  church  the  body  was  borne,  escorted 
by  colored  troops,  to  Faneuil  Hall,  where  it  lay 


180        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

for  three  hours,  and  a  long  procession  of  the 
poor  and  of  the  colored  population  passed  the 
coffin.  The  tears  that  were  shed  by  these  were 
the  dead  man's  true  eulogy  and  even  more  elo 
quent  than  the  great  tribute  that,  three  months 
later,  George  William  Curtis  paid  to  him  at  the 
memorial  meeting  in  Tremont  Temple,  when 
the  community  made  recognition  of  the  loss  it 
had  sustained. 

Ten  years  after  Mr.  Phillips's  death,  the 
city  of  Boston,  somewhat  belatedly,  affixed  to 
the  wall  of  the  postoffice  building,  which  now 
rises  on  the  site  of  the  old  home  in  Essex  street, 
this  tablet: 

HERE 

WENDELL     PHILLIPS    RESIDED    DURING    FORTY    YEARS, 

DEVOTED    BY    HIM    TO    EFFORTS    TO    SECURE 

THE    ABOLITION    OF    AFRICAN    SLAVERY 

IN    THIS    COUNTRY. 

THE  CHARMS  OF  HOME,  THE  ENJOYMENT  OF  WEALTH 
AND     LEARNING,     EVEN     THE     KINDLY     RECOGNI 
TION    OF     HIS    FELLOW    CITIZENS    WERE     BY 
HIM    ACCOUNTED    AS    NAUGHT    COM 
PARED    WITH    DUTY. 


HE     LIVED    TO    SEE     JUSTICE     TRIUMPHANT,     FREEDOM 

UNIVERSAL  AND  TO  RECEIVE  THE  TARDY  PRAISES 

OF     HIS     OPPONENTS.       THE     BLESSINGS     OF 

THE    POOR,   THE    FRIENDLESS    AND   THE 

OPPRESSED     ENRICHED    HIM. 


ATTACK    ON    THE    CITADEL    OF    REACTION         181 

IN  BOSTON 

HE  WAS  BORN  29TH   NOVEMBER,    1811,  AND  DIED  2ND 
FEBRUARY,    1884. 


THIS    TABLET    WAS    ERECTED    IN    1894    BY    ORDER    OF 
THE    CITY    COUNCIL    OF    BOSTON. 

I  can  not  help  noticing  that  this  tribute  con 
tains  no  mention  of  that  greater  cause  of  eman 
cipation  to  which  Mr.  Phillips  devoted  the  lat 
ter  half  of  his  life  and  which,  in  his  judgment, 
included  the  abolition  of  chattel  slavery.  So 
far,  I  believe,  this  is  the  only  public  memorial 
to  the  greatest  American  orator. 

His  fame  has  suffered  sorely  and  most  un 
justly  because  of  the  nature  of  the  reforms  that 
he  espoused  and  for  no  other  reason.  If  he 
had  confined  his  eloquence  to  academic  subjects 
or  to  pleading  at  the  bar,  there  would  now  be 
of  him  a  greater  number  of  statues  and  me 
morials  than  perpetuate  the  name  of  Daniel 
Webster.  The  substantial  truth  of  all  that  he 
urged  against  American  scholarship  is  verified 
by  the  record  in  his  own  case.  Mention  of  him 
is  carefully  excluded  from  all  school  books, 
school  children  are  never  told  anything  of  his 
marvelous  story,  the  next  generation  after  his 
own  grows  up  in  practical  ignorance  that  he 
ever  lived.  The  reason  for  all  this  is  solely  the 


182        THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

fact  that  he  was  enlisted  in  causes  unpopular 
among  the  prosperous  element  that  controls 
and  directs  American  education.  He  was  an 
agitator;  what  that  element  desires  is  peace  and 
silence  upon  the  very  topics  that  Phillips  per 
petually  stirred.  He  championed  the  cause  of 
hated  labor,  he  made  war  upon  capitalism 
and  the  wage  system,  he  took  his  place  with 
the  advocates  of  absolute  democracy,  indus 
trial  and  political;  and  for  this  reason  alone 
his  name  is  slighted  and  his  services  forgot 
ten. 

Yet  if  we  were  to  consider  nothing  but  his 
great  gift  in  art,  how  barren  would  be  any 
account  of  oratory  that  did  not  dwell  upon  his 
unequalled  achievements !  Nothing  that  we 
read  of  Demosthenes,  Mirabeau,  Chatham, 
Burke  or  Erskine  compares  with  the  amazing 
story  of  this  man's  command  over  the  spoken 
word.  Or  if  we  think  of  historical  accuracy, 
how  much  better  than  a  bundle  of  lies  is  a 
recital  of  the  anti-slavery  struggle  that  dwells 
not  at  length  upon  his  great  services?  Or  if 
we  consider  the  ethics  of  public  and  private 
life,  whither  shall  we  turn  for  another  example 
of  a  man  so  conspicuously  blameless?  What 
better  or  more  inspiring  lesson  can  be  drawn 
from  all  history  than  this  life  of  unswerving 


ATTACK    ON    THE    CITADEL    OF    REACTION         183 

devotion  to  conscience  and  duty?  Other  men 
have  flashed  into  fame  by  the  sacrifice  of  one 
moment  on  some  altar  of  patriotism.  This 
man's  sacrifice  was  of  all  the  years  of  his  life 
—  all  that  comfort,  leisure,  peace,  culture, 
study,  learning,  friendship,  achievement  and 
honor  can  mean  to  one  endowed  beyond  almost 
all  other  men  for  the  enjoyment  of  these. 

In  the  life  of  Wendell  Phillips,  alone  of  all 
the  famous  men  whose  careers  I  have  ever  en 
countered,  the  biographer  can  find  nothing  that 
tarnishes  the  luster  of  the  consistent  whole. 
No  excuses  are  demanded  for  him  and  no  al 
lowances;  there  is  nothing  about  him  to 
conceal.  In  public  and  in  private  life  he 
walked  without  deviation  from  the  loftiest 
standards.  Cautious  friends  sometimes  de 
plored  what  they  called  the  violence  of  his  ut 
terances;  they  never  had  the  slightest  cause  to 
regret  a  lapse  in  his  conduct,  not  one  surren 
der  to  temptation,  not  one  instance  of  faltering 
in  duty.  I  know  not  where  shines  another  such 
character,  nor  any  other  study  so  rich  in  sat 
isfaction  as  the  record  of  his  life.  For  in  the 
words  that  he  himself  applied  to  Washington 
he  was  "  the  bright  consummate  flower,  of  our 
civilization  and  in  all  ways  the  incarnation 
of  the  highest  American  ideal." 


184         THE    STORY    OF    WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

Swinburne   might  have  written   for  him  the 
tribute  he  wrote  for  Mazzini: 

Thou  knowest  that  here  the  likeness  of  the  best 

Before  thee  stands; 
The  head  most  high,  the  heart  found  faithfullest, 

The  purest  hands! 

Diligently  the  whole  story  of  our  civil  war 
is  perverted  and  distorted  to  the  minds  of  the 
rising  generation.  The  glory  for  the  abolition 
of  slavery  is  bestowed  upon  men  that  had  no 
feeling  nor  conviction  against  the  hateful  in 
stitution  and  were  no  more  than  the  passive 
instruments  in  the  hands  of  an  aroused  public 
opinion.  Back  of  all  these,  back  of  the  mili 
tary  commanders  whose  statues  rise  now  in 
every  square  of  the  national  capital,  back  of 
the  misread  and  misunderstood  Emancipation 
Proclamation,  was  the  little  band  of  Abolition 
ists,  steadily  appealing  to  the  nation's  con 
science.  The  real  emancipators  of  the  slaves 
were  Garrison,  Phillips,  John  Brown  and  the 
few  that  standing  with  them  upon  the  exalted 
ground  of  right,  despised  expediency  and  re 
fused  to  compromise.  Guns  roar  and  armies 
march  and  generals  maneuver  in  the  center  of 
all  men's  attention,  but  the  real  force  that 
moves  the  world  and  is  always  mightier  than 
all  of  these  is  the  force  of  moral  conviction. 


ATTACK    ON    THE    CITADEL    OF    REACTION         185 

But  for  the  steady  persistent  agitation  of  the 
Abolitionists,  at  the  risk  of  their  lives  and  in  the 
face  of  fiercest  opposition,  there  would  have 
been  no  sentiment  to  rescue  Kansas,  to  hail 
John  Brown,  to  recruit  the  Northern  armies, 
and  to  fire  them  with  the  spirit  of  a  superb  con 
secration  that  carried  them  to  the  victory  at 
last.  We  have  loaded  with  honors  the  men  that 
obeyed  this  profound  feeling  by  leading  the 
armies  of  the  Union.  We  have  rewarded  with 
silence  and  obscurity  many  of  the  men  that  for 
thirty  years  stood  and  proclaimed  the  truth; 
but  none  have  we  neglected  as  we  have  neglected 
Wendell  Phillips,  champion  of  labor  and  foe 
of  the  wage  system. 

Oh  for  a  spirit  such  as  thine  that  wrought 
Above  all  dust  and  dross  of  selfish  aim, 
That  purely  gave  its  all  of  toil  and  thought 
And  had  no  care  for  calumny  nor  blame, 
Praise,  prize,  nor  laurel,  victory  nor  fame; 
That  thrust  a  shield  between  the  weak  and  strong 
And  eased   on   lowly   limbs   the   bondman's   thong, 
Great  heart  that  knew  no  passion  save  for  right, 
no  hatred  but  of  wrong! 


THE    END 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWE1 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

oo  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immed.ate 


CD'S  8 1986 


LD  2lA-60m-7,'66 
(G4427slO)476B 


General  Library 
University  of  Califorr 
Berkeley 


n?7!7 
GENERAL  LIBRARY  -  U.C.  BERKELEY 


600075^78(3 


.1 


M199G10 

••' 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


